title: Abandoned Women: Scottish Convicts Exiled Beyond the Seas
author:  Lucy Frost 
description: <b>Lucy Frost</b> has spent a career researching and writing about nineteenth-century women. She is the author of <i>No Place for a Nervous Lady</i> and other books on women's experience.
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  # D.E. Stevenson  
  
  
  _Spring Magic_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Frances was free. She had enough money for her holiday, and when it was over
  she would find useful work. Her plans were vague, but she would have plenty of
  time to think things out when she got to Cairn. One thing only was certain—she
  was never going back to prison again._
  
  
    
  
  
  Young Frances Field arrives in a scenic coastal village in Scotland, having
  escaped her dreary life as an orphan treated as little more than a servant by
  an uncle and aunt. Once there, she encounters an array of eccentric locals,
  the occasional roar of enemy planes overhead, and three army wives—Elise,
  Tommy, and Tillie—who become fast friends. Elise warns Frances of the
  discomforts of military life, but she’s inclined to disregard the advice when
  she meets the dashing and charming Captain Guy Tarlatan.
  
  
  The ensuing tale, one of D.E. Stevenson’s most cheerful and satisfying, is
  complicated by a local laird with a shady reputation, a Colonel’s daughter
  w