The Safe Bridge by Frances Parkinson Keyes

I hadn't read one of these in many years, I have nearly a full shelf of them back in the hall, but hadn't done more than think of them fondly from time to time. There was Came a Cavalier, the one that my grandmother wanted to reread shortly before her death. That was quite an exercise, she was very nearly blind - but she really wanted to read it herself rather than have it read to her, although my sister and I were on hand to have done it. So I sacrificed my paperback to the cause and scanned it page by page into high resolution pdfs and my sister printed the pages out - the book is long since out of print and I suppose Keyes was never popular enough to make the transition to electronic format. Dinner at Antoine's is the one I knew best, all about old New Orleans, but I would have sworn that I read them all -- with the exception of this one.

This one was originally released in 1934 and rereleased in paper in 1965. It is set in colonial New England and is the slightly fictionalized story of a young woman who is sent away to America in disgrace by her Scottish family. High drama - as her ship sails, she sees on shore the procession of her own funeral. When she arrives in New England she is abandoned by even her servants with a family being well-paid to keep her, and so begins the transition from a favored daughter of the aristocracy to a young woman without family in a harsh frontier community. The original of the character, Elizabeth Burr, is one Elizabeth Todd and most of the events of her life are recorded with reasonable faithfulness.

The style is a little dated perhaps, and the story has decided moralistic overtones, but I enjoyed it. I might not have if I hadn't read all of those stories back when I was in college - nothing like a little nostalgia.