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PAPER WOMAN
BY SUZANNE ADAIR
Review by Diana Bane
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PAPER WOMAN is a promising debut novel, not only for its author
but also for the new small press in North Carolina that has
published the book in a well-bound, error-free trade paperback
edition. More picaresque adventure tale than mystery, the myriad
historical details carry the story forward in a very convincing
way.
In the fall of 1780, Sophie Barton is a twice-widowed woman,
a mother and soon-to-be grandmother at 33, who lives in the
north of Georgia and manages her father’s small newspaper
business. The American Revolution is well under way, and Sophie
has declared herself neutral in the matter of independence
from England. When dealing with her suitor, the commander of
the British forces in the region, she avows her allegiance
to King George III, but in her heart she simply longs for the
fighting to be over so that her small community will no longer
be torn apart by divided loyalties. Her father is one of the
rebels, and uses his newspaper clandestinely to support the
cause. Sophie’s neutrality is threatened when he prints
a broadside attack against the British for massacre of rebel
troops after they’d surrendered, and then he disappears
and leaves Sophie to take the blame. She is placed under house
arrest under the watchful eye of her nemesis, Lt. Fairfax.
Eventually it comes to light that her father and another rebel,
one of Sophie’s contemporaries, were murdered. By deciphering
a coded message -- a task for which she is supposed to be rewarded
with release from house arrest -- Sophie discovers a Spanish
involvement in local war matters and possibly in her father’s
murder as well. The decoded cipher then takes her, and a small
company that includes her brother and a childhood friend-of-the-heart,
on a journey that eventually reaches Cuba by way of colonial
St Augustine, Florida.
Sophie is an appealing heroine. It is no easy thing for a new
author to create a character to whom the reader is immediately
drawn, and who can carry off a storyline of this size and scope.
Suzanne Adair has done that here. Her greatest strength seems
to be her command of the historical period, which is so strong
it occasionally overwhelms everything else.
There is a suggestion that Paper Woman may be the first of
a series about Sophie Barton. If that is so, the author might
consider that there are times in writing fiction when less
is more. My only criticism of this first novel is that I often
felt swamped by details, particularly of description, that
were not necessary to telling the story. Yes, the details added
authenticity, but one must know when enough is enough. The
fact that I kept on reading is a tribute to how much I liked
Sophie Barton and wanted to know what would happen to her quest
to find the truth.
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