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3.0 out of 5 stars
Ye olde Homestead, 31 Dec 2005
Frances Parkinson Keyes, author of books like "Dinner at Antoine's, started her writing career in 1919 with "The Old Gray Homestead." It's a fairly entertaining novel, especially since it was her literary debut, but the love story and family conflicts seem a bit contrived.
Once the "Old Gray Homestead" was the most exceptional farm in the county, but now it's almost a ruin. But the Gray family's lives change when a wealthy young widow, Sylvia Cary, comes to live with them. She soon uses her money to help them in every possible way -- trips to Europe, music lessons, rebuilding the house, and modernizing the farm in every way.
She particularly changes the life of the resentful Austin Gray, who also learns about the painful secrets she's hiding. He begins to fall in love with her, despite the fact that several other men -- including his brother Thomas -- are also in love with her. But in the middle of teen pregnancies and Sylvia's tragic past, can a farmer and a society girl actually make it work?
Frances Parkinson Keyes published "The Old Gray Homestead" shortly after her husband entered the Senate, which was the start of a long career as a bestselling fiction writer. Her books tend to be a bit formulaic, but she did expand her range to include romances, murder mysteries, political dramas and war stories.
Keyes' first book reads like one -- Austin literally goes from loathing to loving Sylvia overnight, and the plot has few twists except Edith's pregnancy. Her writing is a mix of 20th-century informality and 19-century slowness, although this one leans more on the 19th-century. The conventions are a bit old, as is the vision of an early-twentieth-century small town which is aghast at movies and dances.
Keyes also does a passable job with her cast of characters, but few of them are ever fully fleshed out. Sylvia is a pretty solid heroine, given her past with an abusive husband and two dead babies, but Austin is almost a cliche of the brooding rough-cut man. Most of the others, like Thomas and hired boy Peter, are in the story just long enough to fulfil their purposes, then vanish.
"The Old Gray Homestead" is an interesting love story set in a rapidly changing era, with some of the flaws of the first-time author. The good news is: It gets better from here on.
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