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Karen Pelletier has altogether enough going on in her life. She has papers to grade, classes to teach, and student disputes to resolve. She has an on-going feud with her English department chair over which literary works can appropriately be taught in a liberal arts college and the side she's chosen may end up costing her tenure. She's failing a repulsive student who just happens to be the son of one of the college's trustees. Her ex-boyfriend is getting married. And in her spare time, she's considering writing a book about Mrs Serena Northbury, 19th century author of women's fiction. When her friend and colleague Jill gives her a well-preserved, expensively-bound copy of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Karen is pleased, but when she opens the book and finds that it bears the bookplate of the very Serena Northbury she's been studying, she's more than excited. Through the bookseller Karen traces the book to a woman named Edith Hart who lives on a large estate called Meadowbrook, which is located a short distance from Enfield. Edith Hart, a feisty but ailing physician, proves to be none other than the great granddaughter of Serena Northbury. In no time Karen has enlisted Edith in the cause of rehabilitating Mrs Northbury. Edith allows her full and unfettered access to all of Serena's papers that languish in the old home's attic. As she sorts through the papers, Karen discovers an unpublished manuscript of Serena's. Edith dies under suspicious circumstances and leaves the whole of the Meadowbrook estate to Karen to establish a center for the study of women's literature. Naturally, this plan arouses the ire of those of Serena's descendants who had other uses in mind for the cash. Dobson, herself an English professor at Fordham, has given us a fast, entertaining story filled with humorous digs at the academy and its politics as well as sincere passion for the untold stories of women who wrote women's fiction before it was a respectable profession. Those readers who have an interest in feminist literature will find this book particularly satisfying.
Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, January 2005
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