Leeway Cottage

Beth Gutcheon has an elegiac style that envelopes readers entirely in the fictional worlds she creates. In LEEWAY COTTAGE, she takes us back to WWII--to the isolated world of America's moneyed Eastern establishment and to the front lines of the Danish Resistance. These two worlds collide in one complex, unhappy marriage between an American and a Dane. Susan Ericksen offers a lucid reading in a well-modulated voice that is easy to listen to. Admittedly, she has taken the stately quality of Gutcheon's writing a bit too much to heart; one wishes she had picked up the pace a bit. Nonetheless, she has a light, sure touch with the accents, giving just enough to make the dialogue scenes real. And the clarity of her narration is gratifying. This is a satisfying listen. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

February 28, 2005
In this sprawling family epic, Gutcheon (More Than You Know
) chronicles how an unlikely marriage endures over the course of the 20th century. The novel is anchored in the idyllic, fictional summer colony of Dundee, Maine, which will always feel like home to Annabelle Sydney Brant, but turns on the story of the Danish resistance against the Nazis in WWII, a revolt Annabelle's Danish-born, half-Jewish husband, Laurus Moss, leaves the U.S. to join. Annabelle matures from the young, cosseted Annabee (coming-out parties in Cleveland, sailing in Maine) to the bohemian Sydney (voice lessons and a flat in New York City), clashing with her chilly, socialite mother, Candace, along the way. In New York, she meets Laurus, a pianist, and as they court, Hitler marches on Europe. When the Nazis invade Denmark in 1940, Laurus cannot rest idly with his homeland and family endangered, so joins the London-based Danish Resistance. During their separation, Sydney gives birth to the first of three children and Laurus's family escapes from Denmark to Sweden. The war and time apart change but don't estrange Laurus and Sydney, whose lasting union despite glaring differences puzzles observers: "Sydney and Laurus Moss were like a tiger and a zebra married to each other. What were
those two doing together?" Charting a marriage against the backdrop of a tumultuous century, Gutcheon writes evocatively of love and war. Agent, Wendy Weil.