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Pemberley Remembered: Internet Book Database

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Pemberley Remembered by Mary Lydon Simonsen

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Rank: 3187

This Week's Rank: 893

On 2 shelves

Description/Synopsis:

Maggie Joyce, a 22-year old American from a small Pennsylvania coal-mining town, arrives in England in the summer of 1947. After weeks of touring the sights of London, Maggie visits Montclair, an 18th Century Georgian country house located in the Peak District of Derbyshire, because she has been told that the former residents of the mansion, William Lacey and Elizabeth Garrison, were the inspiration for the characters of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen's masterpiece, Pride & Prejudice, and that Montclair is the novel's Pemberley.

During her visit to the nearby Village of Crofton, Maggie meets Beth and Jack Crowell, both of whom have ties to the Lacey family and Montclair, and who know if the legends associated with the house and Fitzwilliam Darcy are true. Maggie is befriended by the Crowells who share with her stories of the real people who inspired the Darcys, the Bennet sisters, Lady Catherine De Bourgh, and many of the other memorable characters portrayed in the novel. As their friendship matures, the Crowells, who married in the midst of the horrors of World War I, reveal the devastating impact that the war had on their family--effects that are still being felt 30 years later.

While exploring the Darcy/Bennet love story, Maggie falls in love with Rob McAllister, an American who served as a navigator on a B-17 bomber and who flew 30 missions over Nazi Germany. The effect of seeing planes being shot down is seared into his memory, and he chooses to return to Britain to live among those who have endured so much and understand his loss. Although Rob and Maggie are deeply in love, Rob's wartime experiences have left him with a reluctance to make any decision that affects anyone other than himself, and that reluctance has consequences for his relationship with Maggie.

Pemberley Remembered is a story of lovers who bridge class differences in Regency England, but it also speaks to love and loss in postwar England.

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Growing up in the small mining town of Minooka, Pennsylvania was very depressing unless you found an escape. Maggie Joyce’s escape was first in reading. Jane Austen and Pride & Prejudice represented one of her escapes. By the time she was grown she almost had every passage memorized.

In June 1944, Maggie headed to Washington, D.C. to work in the Treasury Department. This employment eventually led her to work for the Army Exchange Service and a position in Germany. War torn Germany was not the best place to be and Maggie got a transfer to London. From there her life took an interesting turn.

Maggie traveled to visit the estate called Montclair, which is rumored to be the estate called Pemberley in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. On her first visit to Montclair she met Beth and Jack Cromwell who have ties to Montclair. She learned the love story of Beth and Jack as well as the history behind Montclair and the connections to Pride & Prejudice.

Maggie also met Rob McAllister who flew bombing missions over Germany during World War II. Pemberley Remembered tells the love story of Maggie and Rob as well as that of Beth and Jack Cromwell. Rob and Maggie became engrossed in the stories surrounding Montclair and the background for the acclaimed novel Pride & Prejudice.

Pemberley Remembered gives you inside glimpses in the life of people living in Europe during the time immediately following World War II as well as a glimpse back into the history surrounding World War I.

This book is well written and is a wonderful, informative story. Reading Pemberley Remembered is reading history, romance and even a little mystery all combined in one wonderful book.

Review By happyruby