Randolph Legacy

Charbonneau (Waltzing in Ragtime) once again shows impressive command of the elements of historical romance in a tale of suffering, revenge, redemption and, of course, love, set in post-Revolutionary America. In 1805, an angelic 12-year-old American midshipman called Washington, after being flogged nearly to death by a sadistic English impresser, is saved by a compassionate Frenchman. Eight years later, the crippled lad, hidden on ship and raised by his French mentor, falls in love with Judith Mercer, a lovely Quaker missionary a decade his senior, who's returning to the U.S. from a mission in Britain. Vowing to release Washington from his floating prison, Judith enlists the aid of Dolley Madison, who helps effect a rescue in the nick of time, when his life is in peril. Meanwhile, Judith has discovered Washington's true identity: the gentle and philosophical youth is actually Ethan Randolph, third son of a wealthy Virginia plantation owner. When Judith brings Ethan to Virginia, the Randolph women take to him, but his elder brothers are convinced he's a fortune-hunter. After his crippled leg is rebroken and heals straight, Ethan begins his metamorphosis, and it remains to be seen whether his love for Judith will survive. As Ethan learns of Judith's past, discovering that her mother and siblings were massacred by a royalist sympathizer after the Revolutionary War, he begins to fear that the killer is still a threat--a fear that turns out to be well-founded. Charbonneau fills her book with touchstones of early America: plantation culture, the frontier, the underground railroad. The too-perfect accord between the 30-ish Judith and the 20-ish Ethan only slightly disrupts the novel's governing tone of unobtrusive sentimentality as Charbonneau avoids the saccharine with the help of a lively plot, narrative tension and convincing characterization. (Aug.)