becomes a lady of leisure who enjoys a life of luxurious comfort, though she has moments of dissatisfaction and her hard-bitten mother says bluntly that Honeywood women are built for work, not for pleasure. The years of lazy contentment end abruptly with a terrible fire in the village of Marblehead. Amos' factory is utterly destroyed and he is ruined. Overnight he goes from being the richest man in town to a mere shadow of his former self. Destitute, he seeks work as a sailmaker, but cannot adjust to his new role. Hesper, meanwhile, has taken over management of the Hearth and Eagle from her aging mother. The inn soon becomes more successful than ever and Hesper emerges as the main breadwinner of her family. Despairing and utterly crushed, Amos soon dies, leaving Hesper to raise her children alone and to become the wise head of the family. At the end of her long life, she reflects that while men draw strength from money or power or acts of heroism, a woman's strength always comes from within. Reception Kirkus Reviews noted, "more ambitious novel than its predecessors, Dragonwyck and The Turquoise, it seems derivative, imitative, and too dependent on the panoply of history and the changing scene over a long life than on the significance of characterization". References American historical novels 1948 American novels Novels set in Massachusetts Marblehead, Massachusetts