Tomorrows Tide

Bringing his characteristic ingenuousness to another well-executed historical romance, Macdonald (Kernow & Daughter) portrays a young girl's psychosexual wellsprings against a backdrop of social and technological upheaval. In provincial Cornwall, Jennifer Owen's coming to young womanhood is foreshadowed by two seemingly unrelated events: in 1910, at age 14, she discovers an abandoned baby boy, whom her mother promptly turns over to a local orphanage; two years later, in a starcrossed encounter, she becomes infatuated with Barry Moore, a local Romeo widely known as a ""buck rabbit with a bicycle."" When WWI breaks out, Jennifer's father is killed in London by a bomb dropped from a German zeppelin. Jennifer, to assist her mother in rearing her younger siblings, takes employment with the imperious Mrs. Colston-Smart, helping to convert her opulent family estate into a convalescent hospital for the combat-wounded. Her smoldering passion for Barry, now an officer, is finally consummated when he's sent to recover from a war injury. But their romance is short-lived, as Barry is sent back to duty, leaving readers wondering what, if anything, he has to do with the ongoing mystery of the abandoned baby. Meanwhile, Jennifer, wooed by movie talent scouts, is torn between caring for the wounded and a chance for fame. Vivid views of the countryside and scenes that reveal the rigid classism of English society spice a narrative that delivers all the comforting sentimental pleasures that readers have grown to expect from Macdonald. (July)