REVIEW:

The Hedgerow by Anne Leigh Parrish was my latest read by an unknown author to me. Ms. Parrish has published several books but she just popped up on my radar. It looks like she has a four book series about The Dugan Family and several other books with interesting titles. She also has several collections of short stories. You might want to take a look at her offerings.

This book held my interest and I am not exactly sure why. It takes place right after the war when women who worked were expected to go back home and take care of their husbands and families. For some women that was a more difficult task. Edith Sloan is the main character in this book who was a map maker during the war and married a man she did not love. Edith has a lot of ambition. She owns her own bookstore and wants to be a publisher of authors who are not mainstream.

I kept reading this book waiting for something really big to happen. It just kept plodding along and never really had a satisfying ending. Kind of like a few year period in the life of any one of us. This may be the beginning of a series but, I did not see anything that made me think it would be. The book started on one day in the life of Edith and continued through a few messes and ended on a note. Not a high note or a low one. 

I am hoping I find out more about Edith Sloan and how her life progresses. Maybe that is all the author was trying to accomplish with this book. If it is going to be a series, I can go with that. If not, I kind of wonder what the whole purpose of the book was. It was not a terribly long book so it was worth the experience.

If you like period books that take you to a time and place you’ve never been, this would be right up your alley. I definitely want to read something else by this author. Until next time…Happy Reading!

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I received a complimentary copy of this book from the #AnneLeighParrish, #Netgalley and  #UnsolicitedPress. The opinions I have expressed are my own and I was not required to write a review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

SYNOPSIS:

An elegant, character-driven novel of paradoxes, The Hedgerow reveals universal human truths.– FOREWORD REVIEWS


It’s 1949, the freedom granted women by the Second World War is over, and stifling social conventions are once more at play. Edith Sloan, the rebellious, well-educated heroine of An Open Door returns in The Hedgerow to pursue her dreams of owning a thriving bookstore on Harvard Square and establishing a poetry press to publish the silent and underserved. Free of her dreary marriage to Walter, she receives a proposal from Henry, a wealthy British peer and the man who made the purchase of her bookstore possible. When she accepts, is it from love or gratitude? Will being his wife help or hinder her plans? Edith soon finds herself at the intersection of free expression and censorship. Duty competes with desire, while serious endeavors are undermined by trivial pursuits. As she tries to balance the competing demands in her life, troubling facts from Henry’s past come to light. Edith also discovers that being a pioneer in publishing comes with consequences she hadn’t foreseen. The decade draws to a close and delivers one more surprise Edith must summon extraordinary courage to face.