Sunflower Girl

Set in France at the end of the 19th century, Hylton's latest historical novel (after In the Shadow of the Nile) manages to be entertaining despite its reliance on stereotypes about gender and class. Beautiful and clever Marie Claire Moreau, a scholarship student at a Dijon convent school, falls in love with Andrew Martindale, the second son of a British earl, when he paints her in a field of sunflowers on her father's farm. They have a few days of romance, but when his older brother dies, Andrew inherits the title and returns to England, convincing himself that the girl will forget him--and unaware that she's pregnant. Cast out of her convent school when her condition is discovered, Marie Claire flees the farm after her daughter is born, seeking work in Dijon. Ultimately, she becomes the mayor of the city. In what is to be a lifelong effort to hurt Andrew and help her lovely daughter, Chantal, Marie Claire seduces his brother-in-law, the devilishly charming Viscomte de Mirandol, whose wife, ironically, is one of the few women who befriends her. Although Chantal does find a place in society, she must bear innuendoes about her mother's past and suffers when she discovers her true parentage. She overcomes her pain to become the darling of 1911 Parisian haute couture. Although, as always, Hylton renders characters and events with sprightly ease, the moral in this tale seems to be that women are catty, men are forgiving and blood will tell. (July)