Independent 24yo heroine is disconcerted by her attraction to 1 of the Confederate prisoners who her father hired to work in their shipping business. His brazen kisses ignite her sexuality for the 1st time ever which scares her enough to avoid him & accept a more suitable suitor's marriage proposal. Hero kidnaps her when he & his prisoner crew manage to escape from their guards. They sail to England where Hero plans to seek help to revoke his prisoner status in America. Heroine mistakenly thought that Hero would free her once they reached England but only to be guarded while he away for business. She escapes but is captured & forced to work as a prostitute in a brothel. Hero rescues her days later & was bereft & guilty at the trauma she experienced in his care. He lets her go back to America & heroine believes he's only doing so b/c he's disgusted with her forced-prostitution experiences. How will these 2 get back together?As her 1st book(written in 1978), Camp's writing technique was good overall. The book flowed smoothly, story was consistent, & written with good emotional pull. What I didn't like about this book was the content. It is very much a bodice ripper & much of it was in the hands of Hero. He kidnapped, raped, & threatened her with bodily harm. He also cheated on her with multiple women just b/c he had nothing else better to do during the 3 days he was waiting on someone. He never confessed nor apologized to her for it. It was ironic that he realized that he fell in love with her after a few days of bedding other women. He wasn't trying to run away from his feelings for heroine. It just came to him that he still thought often of heroine even when he was with these other women. Hero wasn't all bad & he got better towards the end when he realized he loved heroine. He admitted & apologized for raping & abusing her. He sought vengeance over the 2 men who raped her while she was in the brothel. Heroine, on the other hand, changed for the worse when she was with Hero. She went from being an avidly independent & blunt woman to a more submissive & simpering one.I'd only recommend this book if you're interested in comparing this 1st Camp book with her later ones.
Exciting Civil War Bodice Ripper!What can I say about this book? It’s a well-written page-turner, a bodice ripper and Lisa Gregory’s (aka Candace Camp’s) first novel, published in 1978. Set during the Civil War, it tells the story of Katherine Devereaux, the only daughter of a wealthy Boston shipbuilder, who is abducted by one of the Confederate prisoners working in her father’s shipyard. Katherine is witty, independent and capable, and when we first meet her in Boston, she is intent on marrying a Union naval officer, Lt. William Perkins. But that plan would soon change.Captain Matthew Hampton is arrogant and selfish. He desired the haughty Miss Devereaux from the moment he laid eyes on her. And since he takes what he wants, when he escapes with a ship and his men, he kidnaps Katherine and takes her to sea, and then to England. In Katherine’s own words, “He stole me! He raped me! And now he refuses to release me, locks me in here like a dog in its kennel.”When she does escape him in England, it is to a terrible fate. I kept thinking all the while it is Hampton who is responsible for ALL her misfortune since he abducted her in the first place. For me, it was sort of a “loved her, hated him” story. When he finally comes to realize he loves her, he just couldn’t grovel enough to compensate for what Katherine experienced. I just could not like him, no matter how contrite he became. To my mind the real hero here was the constant Lt. Perkins, who still wanted Katherine even after all she had experienced.For all that, if you’re looking for a good bodice ripper with a very worthy heroine, I recommend it.
