Happy November reading to all AAUW members!
A reading delight is in store for the Brown Bag 'n' Books reading group on November 10. We will gather at 12:30 PM on the second Tuesday, with our brown bag lunches or snacks and beverage. Join us in the annex library at Laguna Lake Mobile Estates at 1801 Prefumo Canyon Road in San Luis Obispo.
The book selected is Maisie Dobbs, the first book in a series of 18 historical novels. Jacqueline Winspear, my personally favorite author, is originally from Kent, England. She now lives in California. The reviewer is Gina Kirk.
Come and join us!
Nancy Page, Group Coordinator
Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear
First published Jan 1, 2003, 304 pages
Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, soon became her patron, taking the remarkably bright youngster under her wing. Lady Rowan's friend, Maurice Blanche, often retained as an investigator by the European elite, recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts and helped her earn admission to the prestigious Girton College in Cambridge, where Maisie planned to complete her education.
The outbreak of World War I changed everything. Maisie trained as a nurse, then left for France to serve on the front lines, where she found—and lost—an important part of herself. Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets out on her own as a private investigator in London, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but reveals something very different.
In the aftermath of the Great War, a former officer has founded a working farm known as The Retreat, that acts as a convalescent refuge for ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat, she must finally confront the ghost that has haunted her for over a decade.
