Synopsis
from Goodreads: This
is a story about a girl who wanted things to happen to her.
Celia
Garth lived in Charleston, South Carolina, during the American
Revolution. She had blond hair and brown eyes and a sassy face, and
she worked in a fashionable dressmaking shop.
Things
did happen to Celia, but not as she had planned. The king's army
captured Charleston. The ravisher Tarleton swept through the Carolina
countryside in a wave of blood and fire and debauchery. Caught up in
the ruin were Celia and her friends -- the merry-minded Darren;
Jimmy, whose love for Celia brought her into his tragedy; the
fascinating Vivian, five times married; Godfrey, rich and powerful,
who met disaster because he could control anything in town but the
weather; the daredevil Luke.
Most
people thought the Revolution was lost. Many Americans, like Celia's
handsome cousin Roy, joined the king's side. Then out of the swamps
appeared Francis Marion.
Marion
was a little man. Marion was also crippled. But as Luke said of him,
"When that man's leading a charge, he looks nine feet tall."
In
the dressmaking shop, Celia became a spy for Marion. She sewed, she
smiled sweetly, and in secret she risked her life sending information
to this man that the king's whole army could not catch, the mighty
little man to whom Tarleton angrily gave the name 'Swamp Fox'.
Stats
for my copy: Hardcover, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1959.
How
acquired: Library sale.
First
line: Celia Garth had blond hair and brown eyes.
My
thoughts: As I started CELIA
GARTH, I felt that the writing was a bit simplistic. The first
paragraph is a description of Celia's looks, and I was almost
reminded of a child's chapter book. But it didn't take long for me to
be drawn into Celia's life, and either the writing got better or I
stopped noticing it.
When
we meet Celia, she is a twenty-year-old apprentice at a sewing shop
in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1779. The country is at war with
the British, but Celia is busy living her life and not really
involved in politics or completely aware of what's going on around
her. She often made me think of Scarlett O'Hara, except where
Scarlett was selfish and spoiled and only grudgingly did the right
thing, Celia is sweet and good-natured and happy to help others, a
“poor relation” who is hoping with all her might that when her
apprenticeship is over she'll be given a permanent job and won't have
to rely on her rich cousin to support her.
But
when the town you live in and love with all your heart is invaded by
the enemy, you can't stay unaware. Still, for the first 100 pages or
so the story was focused more on Celia's day to day life, as her
friend Jimmy arranges for her to meet Vivian, who is looking for a
dressmaker, and as Celia becomes embroiled in Vivian's life. There
are lots of secondary characters, and at times I had a little trouble
keeping all of them straight, including Vivian's sons, with the
exception of Luke, the son of her favorite of her five or six
husbands.
“But I'm not just anybody!” protested the unblushing cavalier. “I'm me. Me. Luke Ansell.”
“Luke-?” Celia repeated. She was taken aback, and she had forgotten the surname of Vivian's hot-headed son. He took quick advantage of her hesitation.
“Ansell,” he repeated firmly. He began to spell, counting off the letters on his fingers. “Not just anybody, Ansell. A for anybody, N for nobody, S for somebody, E for everybody, two L's for-” This time he was the one who hesitated.
Celia was laughing. “Yes?” she teased him. “Two L's for what?”
“Two L's for-” he pointed his finger at her and ended triumphantly – “for like-a-body, twice! I've seen you twice, I've liked you both times. So now won't you like me and let me walk with you to Mrs. Thorley's?”
When
the British attack Charleston, many townspeople escape the city to
the relative safety of the countryside, including Vivian and her
household. Celia, now engaged to Jimmy, refuses to leave, feeling
that she needs to be near her fiance. And at this point the story
became very tense and gripping, as the two women find themselves
alone in the house, at times hiding in the cellar from the guns and
cannons firing across the town, at times rushing outside to stamp out
a fire started by a shell hitting one of the outbuildings or the
porch railing.
I've
read a lot of books set during the Holocaust and the Civil War, but I
realized that I haven't really read anything set during the
Revolutionary War. I can't say that I know a lot about it, but I feel
that Ms. Bristow did some meticulous research while writing this
book. She brings the plight of the rebels, the day to day life of
surviving in the middle of a war, the horrors that families faced, to
vivid life.
A
very compelling story, and a new author whose other books I'm now
going to have to track down.
