A Woman Alone

As the result of a joke, headstrong Roseanne Kitto attends the local Ram-Buck fair with Stephen Morvah, the squire's son, in this romance set in 19th-century Cornwall. While Stephen and Roseanne find themselves happily surprised by their easy affection, Annette, Stephen's young, ambitious sister, and Mark Bodilly, Roseanne's erstwhile boyfriend, are not. Annette worries that Roseanne would be the perfect mistress for the Morvah property, Skyburriowe, if she and Stephen married, a station Annette wants for herself. After the Morvahs forbid Stephen to court Roseanne, Annette befriends her in order to monitor and, she hopes, manipulate the liaison. When the mother of a little boy is murdered, Roseanne decides to raise the child and, with returns from a small investment, buys her own farm Misunderstandings bred by jealousy and an attempted kidnapping further animate MacDonald's ( A Notorious Woman ) robust romance, which handily evokes the natural landscape of Cornwall and the dialect and class distinctions of its inhabitants. (Aug.)