Three Words For Goodbye

Gaynor and Webb (Meet Me in Monaco) return with a slight historical romance. In 1937, worldly East Hampton, N.Y., matriarch Violet Bell is dying. She sends her adult granddaughters, Clara and Maddie, to Europe with letters to convey her final goodbyes to faraway loved ones. Inseparable during childhood, the girls have clashed since artist Clara’s recent engagement to real estate developer Charles Hancock, whose rapaciousness Maddie finds deplorable. Meanwhile, Clara secretly longs for her older, married art tutor, while the brilliant but awkward Maddie wants to break into journalism. The sisters cross the Atlantic on the Queen Mary, share a compartment on the Orient Express, continue by train to Austria, and, before returning via the ill-fated Hindenburg, see the sights of Paris, Venice, and Vienna. While discovering things about themselves and their family, they bond, just as Violet had hoped. Each chooses a worthy man without discarding her identity or ambitions, and the story doesn’t end with everyone tidily married off. Overall, though, the authors prize travelogue over deep feeling, and despite frequent mentions of Hitler and Mussolini, the ominous historical currents receive short shrift, and there is little to distinguish the protagonists as women of the 1930s . It’s diverting, but not particularly impressive. Agent: Michelle Brower, Aevitas Creative Management. (July)