Château Rousseau in the rural depths of the Dordogne, France, is the location for a splendid novel of family and friendship spanning two generations or more. In 1936, Thirza Caruthers, whom we met in the earlier novel THE GREEK HOUSE, heads to THE LOST CHATEAU to comply with a family obligation.

Thirza is English-Greek, married to an Italian at a time when that isn’t fashionable. Mussolini is throwing his weight around and Thirza's husband, Emilio, isn’t safe there, nor very welcome in Greece. He decides the whole family should join Thirza when she needs to care for an elderly relative in France, which seems safe at the time. I can see a third book approaching about what happens to Thirza when the Nazis start invading, but for now, the tale dwells on the start of the Spanish Civil War and increasingly fraught politics in the newspapers.

The other timeline follows Thirza’s great-aunt Berenice Rousseau, a young bride in the 1800s, walking into a gloomy, isolated house with an older husband who makes it very clear he has power over her. Some readers will get the shivers just thinking of how women were treated, married off young and forgotten about, while men had legal control. Berenice isn’t happy, and she pens sensational novels for amusement in her husband’s absence, only to incur his wrath when he realises.  

In the 1930s, Thirza finds Berenice still feebly living there - to my surprise – and with her little daughter Romi and Italian step-daughter Valentina, tries to clean up and uncover not just the furniture but the family history. This she knows will be sad, as Berenice’s young daughter drowned and her husband departed shortly afterwards. She suspects there is more to the story. Meanwhile, Emilio is obliged to travel in search of his other Italian daughter, Lucia, who selfishly declared she was joining the Fascists and is likely to get into a heck of a lot of trouble.

If I have a complaint, it’s that we stay at Château Rousseau most of the time, with a trip to Paris, and don’t see the war in Spain or get to understand the context. Thirza’s big challenge is not getting too friendly with another man, and of course, not resenting her husband or stepdaughter too much for their dangerous antics. The tale is atmospheric and reminds us of women holding the family together through peace and war. Dinah Jefferies clearly researches deeply to recreate the lives of her characters in THE LOST CHATEAU.