I wouldn't exactly say that A Heart Adrift by Laura Frantz is a retelling of Persuasion by Jane Austen. But I wouldn't exactly say it's NOT one, either. Both are second-chance romances involving a capable but rarely understood woman of good family and a sea captain who might make decisions a little too hastily sometimes. The main characters in both have a best friend who is widowed and runs a business and knows all the local news. There's only one vain and self-centered sister here, as opposed to two in Persuasion. And the main character's dad is actually a good and wise father in this. But there certainly are a lot of similarities.
And, since Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel, I didn't mind that at all!
A Heart Adrift begins in 1755, during what we now call the French and Indian War. Esmée Shaw spends her days running the chocolaterie her mother founded in York, Virginia, decades earlier. Her father runs the coffee shop next door. Both are closer to the waterfront than some snooty genteel folk deem proper, while others are perfectly happy to run the risk of rubbing elbows with seafarers in their quest for famous Shaw chocolates.
This book made me crave chocolate a lot. Be warned.
Esmée's sister Eliza is married to a wealthy and influential man with a title and a fine estate and a fancy house in Williamsburg. She's not pleased at all that her sister is unmarried and runs a shop. So common! So quaint! So much work! Also, Eliza is pregnant with her first child and convinced that this solidifies her place at the center of the entire world.
Ten years earlier, Esmée turned down a proposal from the man she loved, Captain Henri Lennox. She still loves him. He still loves her. But, at the time, she was absolutely certain that she could never be happy if married to a sea captain who had to leave her all the time. You see, her father was an admiral and was rarely home when she was growing up, and she saw how hard that was on her mom, and so on.
Anyway, there's a war on, with the French trying to take over the British colonies in North America, and the Governor of the Virginia Colony wants Captain Lennox to become a privateer and take the fight to the high seas and stop the French from landing so many troops and generally scuttle the French plans. All Henri Lennox wants to do is build a lighthouse and marry Esmée and be a lighthousekeeper. But duty calls, etc.
Everything works out very nicely in the end for the main characters, despite the best efforts of the French navy, random scurrilous rogues, a smallpox epidemic, and even (sometimes) Eliza.
I really loved that this book was set in Williamsburg and York (now Yorktown) because I spend a LOT of time in Colonial Williamsburg, so the characters could be like "I was walking down Duke of Gloucester Street and passed the Raleigh Tavern," and I would be like, "YES! I have been there! I know what that looks like! I know what a spring morning and a fall afternoon and a winter evening feel like there!"
The characters were really well-drawn, and the historical details were almost uniformly delightful. (Except the use of the term "bluestocking" as slang for "women who think too much," which I don't think was common until about 30 years later. But that is my only real quibble!!!!!!!) The love story was paced just perfectly -- we did NOT have to wait nearly 400 pages to get misunderstandings sorted out and come to our senses and so on! I was a big fan of that.
I am not sure I have ever read adult historical fiction that took place during the French and Indian War before, and that was an absolute treat. I will definitely be reading more of Laura Frantz's books.
Particularly Good Bits:
The only certainty about life was its uncertainty. Only God stayed steadfast. Only the Almighty could walk her through life's many changes. And when she felt overwhelmed, like now, she simply had to look back to see how faithful God had been, did she not? The heartaches and closed doors of the past had made the present more beloved (p. 250).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG. No cussing, no smut, but a little on-page violence and threat of assault against a woman. Some lightly described kissing, too.
