The Dovecote

Admirers of the leisurely historical novel will relish Sully's latest (after The Bluebell Pool). Esther Norbrook, still devastated by the death of her husband during a WWI battle two years earlier, seeks solace by visiting the Dorset coast. There, she comes upon a beautifully situated artists' colony, The Dovecote, presided over by the eccentric Julia Brassington, who collects psychologically wounded artists under her proprietary wing. Sensing Esther's grief and soon aware of her gifts as a potter, Julia persuades the bereft widow to move into The Dovecote with her small daughter, Cassie. At the colony, even as she is drawn toward handsome young furniture designer Joseph Kilburn, whose emotional scars from the war have never healed, Esther senses tensions and secrets among the ``wounded doves.'' Underneath Julia's smothering concern for her proteges, she comes to realize, lies an obsessive need to control lives. Julia's manipulations lead to tragic misunderstandings, and it is only by fleeing The Dovecote that Esther and Joseph find individual fulfillment, albeit in unexpected ways. Sully's use of period detail and her generally believable characters will satisfy readers of this genre. (Sept.)