The best opening line for any book ever is in THE WINDFLOWER: 'Merry Patricia Wilder was sitting on a cobblestone wall, sketching three rutabagas and daydreaming about the unicorn.' The Windflower is a pièce de résistance of sweeping 80's romance, an epic tale of an ingénue coming into her own as a woman. It is set against the backdrop of the war of 1812, with British and American spies, pirates (privateers really), and British aristocracy. The prose is flowery, almost florid, but is saved from being overbearing by its gracious and often lyrical descriptions. 'Before Merry in Apollonian splendor stood a man who was capable of vivisecting her soul, with creativity, and putting it on to fry like a Punjabi locust.' It is long, weighing in at 522 pages, consistent with its 1984 original release date (remember those epic sagas of the 80's?), but every page is worth it.

Merry grows up isolated and shy with her Royalist maiden aunt in Virginia. Her brother Carl, whom she rarely sees, sneaks her out occasionally to use her prodigious sketching skills to capture likenesses of British spies to circulate to the Revolutionaries. Merry first sees Devon, Crandall in a tavern with his fellow pirates while she is spying for her sketches. Later that year, Merry and her aunt are traveling to London in the company of Sir Michael Granville when Merry is kidnapped by Devon's pirates in a case of mistaken identity. Devon holds Merry captive, as he remembers Merry form their prior tavern encounter and believes she is working with or sleeping with his sworn enemy Granville. Merry cannot tell Devon the truth without endangering her precious brother.

Devon is an English duke who is working as a British spy, traveling with his privateer half brother Rand Morgan. Devon menaces Merry, threatening her with rape and whipping in an attempt to terrify her into telling the truth about her presumed involvement with Granville. Merry escapes the pirate ship several times with all sorts of over-the-top things happening to her. She nearly drowns, is marooned on an island with a pirate who is eaten by a crocodile, and almost dies from malaria. The pirates on her ship quickly fall in love with her as she is so darling and become willing to do anything for her, which reminds me somewhat of Snow White, and the secondary characters on the pirate ship contribute greatly to the rollicking joy of this book.

While I rolled my eyes a lot as I read this because parts were so campy (which was half the fun), I thoroughly enjoyed this lush journey through the yesteryear of romance. I will add my name to the vast list of people who think THE WINDFLOWER is one of the finest pieces of its time. I strongly urge you to pick up a copy for yourself- you'll find yourself enthusiastically recommending THE WINDFLOWER to all your friends as I am!