Rose Cottage by Mary Stewart
Rose Cottage by Mary Stewart
Summer, 1947. Kate Herrick, widowed in the war, returns to Rose Cottage, her childhood home, to retrieve a few family papers before the house is sold.
But Rose Cottage is not the idyllic paradise she remembers from her childhood. The papers themselves are missing, and neighbours tell stories of night-time prowlers.
Kate discovers that the long shadow of an old secret lies over the house, and in bringing Rose Cottage into the light she will finally be forced to confront the truth of her own past…
Review
Rose Cottage was published in 1997 and was Mary Stewart’s final novel before heading into retirement but it doesn’t really fall into the same category as her romantic suspense novels as our heroine is on more of a personal journey than anything else. The book is set in Todhall, a large estate in the north east of England, and is narrated by Kate Herrick who has returned to the cottage where she was raised by her grandparents to collect some of her grandmother’s belongings. Kate’s grandparents both worked for the Brandon family and were given the cottage to use after their marriage, however Kate’s widowed grandmother has relocated to Scotland and the cottage is due to be sold as part of the larger estate.
As Kate arrives at the cottage, she discovers that someone else has been there and has taken the private documents that her grandmother had hidden in a safe place in the wall next to the fireplace. Kate is even more perplexed when the neighbours claim to have seen lights around the cottage and she finds evidence someone has been digging in the garden. Kate has always known that she was born illegitimate and that her mother left her behind as a baby and later died, however she is intrigued when one of her elderly neighbours claims to have seen her mother putting flowers on her grandfather’s grave. Realising there is a mystery to be solved, Kate decides to stay a few days longer in the hopes that the mysterious visitors might return and she is astonished when her long dead mother appears on the doorstep.
While the cottage setting invokes similarities to Thornyhold, this book does not have the same magical threads running through it and is more nostalgic than anything else. It is a pleasant enough story with enough of a mystery to keep the reader hooked but it is not on a par with Stewart’s other books. However, I did enjoy the Durham setting as I recognised a lot of the places mentioned from my own family research.
