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Two Women, Separated by Centuries, and a Secret - an Editorial Review of "The Bookmark"


Book Blurb:


The legendary Marquis de Lafayette,

A forgotten Moravian woman who became his nurse,

And a bookmark with a secret...

1777. After being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine, the Marquis de Lafayette is taken to the isolated religious community of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he is cared for by a Moravian Single Sister named Liesl Boeckel who has little patience with the arrogant Frenchman and his unwelcome curiosity about her life.

2005. When Abbey Prescott inherits her grandmother’s house in Bethlehem, she discovers an eighteenth-century bookmark, which may reveal a romance between Liesl and Lafayette, and she becomes determined to solve the mystery. However, her quest is complicated by the aftershocks of a failed love affair and a possible romantic entanglement of her own.

The Bookmark is an immersive romantic mystery that illuminates a little-known piece of American history through the lives of two women, separated by the centuries but alike in their determination to confront the past and find a way forward.


Author Bio:


Anne Supsic is a docent at the Moravian Museum in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a dedicated Francophile, and a bookmark collector. When she first learned about a possible romantic relationship between the Marquis de Lafayette and a Moravian Single Sister named Liesl Boeckel, she knew she had found the story she was meant to tell.

When she’s not at home, Anne is traveling the world with her husband (seventy countries and counting), exploring other cultures, and of course, searching for bookmarks.

To learn more, you can visit her online at annesupsic.com.



Book Buy Links:


Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5B74Z9Y







Editorial Review:


The war had shattered the tranquility of her small community, exposing it to a world of tension, sickness, and violent death. With men who drank to excess, took the word of the Lord in vain, and disported themselves with women whose screeching laughter disturbed the quiet nights. Liesl had no interest in the so-called revolution and nothing but disdain for the strangers who had descended on her town. Her only wish was that every one of them, including a certain French marquis, would soon return to wherever they called home.


Writers of historical fiction adore when they come across a hidden story needing to be told, especially when it involves a very well-known historical person and set in such a setting as Pennsylvania during the American Revolution. Who would have thought there might be a secret romance between the Marquis de Lafayette and a young Moravian maiden named Liesl Boeckel, the nurse who cared for him after he was injured in battle.


In September of 1777, Lafayette was alongside General George Washington as the Continental Army intercepted the British between Philadelphia and Baltimore. Lafayette, a young French nobleman who at times supped with Queen Marie Antoinette during his time at home in France, now was in the thick of the conflict and suffered an injury to his leg from a bullet. Washington insisted on Lafayette having the best care, for “his son” as he called him, and soon Lafayette found himself in the care of Mrs. Barbara Boeckel and her daughter, Liesl.

And here is where the author displays her skill in weaving a dual timeline story from the known facts into believable historical fiction. While the facts show that Lafayette did indeed stay a month at the Boeckel residence and Liesl is indeed to have been trained as a nurse and cared for the Marquis, what is not known is the relationship which developed between them. However, the author took the tradition known in Bethlehem Pennsylvania of a serious romance developing between the two and skillfully crafted a very well-told story of a young passionate man seeking a better world, and a young woman whose stilted upbringing in the Moravian community was transformed by the ideals of this revolutionary thinker.


Lafayette's anger drained away. From the first moment he heard rumors of the revolution smoldering in the American colonies, his sole desire had been to join the fight for liberty. He had no intention of forfeiting this opportunity to change the world. He would endure a month of convalescence, but that did not mean he had to like it.

It is well we cannot see the future. I still remember when I believed all things were possible and that happiness was within my grasp.


And along with the story of Lafayette and Liesl, we are presented with the story of Abbey, a modern businesswoman whose ambition takes her to places she'd rather not be, and also takes her back to her hometown of Bethlehem after her grandmother dies and leaves Abbey with the inheritance of a grand Victorian home in need of repair, and a small bookmark framed as a keepsake. When Abbey discovers that the bookmark is a rare antiquity from the 1700s made by none other than Liesl Boeckel, and discovers that she is an ancestor, the story of Lafayette and Liesl have a profound influence on Abbey's life going forward, transforming the rigid businesswoman into someone who reconnects with her past and finds unexpected love just as her ancestress did in the past.


Abbey no longer created a fortress of sheets and comforters around herself in bed at night. Instead, she had moved on to constructing an elaborate personal defense system with imaginary bulkhead barriers and watertight compartments.


While the book is done with extreme care to the original story of Liesl and Lafayette, staying true to the known history, Ms Supsic's take on what develops with the nurse and the patient winds like a lazy river through the Pennsylvania countryside. They share their stories with each other while Lafayette is recuperating, and Lafayette actually listens to Liesl's thoughts and opinions, something she is not used to in this male-dominated closed society. When their true feelings are revealed, in the last few chapters, of their romantic relationship, and the use of the “bookmark” in hiding their secret love notes, the rush of the revelation goes by rather quickly, and before you know it, the book is over. Understandably, the author took great care with the facts versus the fiction, and did not embellish the known facts or the rumors with too much fiction; however, I wish more was said of their possible romantic relationship and much earlier on in the novel than was presented. Most of the book focused more on the romantic relationships between the modern-day protagonist, Abbey, than on any romance between Liesl and Lafayette which was portrayed as an inconvenience which morphed into a friendship, and then into a sweet unattainable romance between an 18th-century German girl and a married man. But, all in all, the use of the bookmark which influenced the past and the present was a great device to use in connecting the love lives of the two women, Abbey and Liesl, and the smooth flowing narrative is an achievement for the author.


*****


“The Bookmark” by Anne Supsic receives four stars from The Historical Fiction Company



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