The Golden Hour

May 6, 2019
The stories of two remarkable women a generation apart are cleverly intertwined in Williams’s sweeping family saga. In 1941, Lulu Randolph, a 25-year-old widowed American journalist, is in Nassau, Bahamas, to write society articles about the duke and duchess of Windsor, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. The duke—as governor of this island paradise with a dark side—and the duchess are portrayed as sometimes helping, but often contributing to, its problems of social inequality, racial tension, and corruption; they could also be complicit in the murder of gold mine owner Harry Oakes, and there are whispers of their Nazi sympathies. As Lulu’s royal access leads her deeper into Nassau’s shady political world and into a murky letter-passing operation with the duke and duchess, she falls in love with Benedict Thorpe, an English botanist with a mysterious background, who is captured by the Nazis in Europe. In the second story line, set in 1900, young German baroness Elfriede von Kleist suffers from postpartum depression; her sister-in-law banishes her to a Swiss clinic. She falls in love with an English patient, Wilfred Thorpe; their relationship takes many twists and turns as a result of Wilfred’s military career, Elfriede’s husband’s betrayal, and two tragic deaths. Past and present come together when a complicated family history becomes known to all. Williams (The Summer Wives) illuminates the story with exotic locales and bygone ambience, and seduces with the irresistible Windsors. Readers will appreciate the wartime espionage that keeps the suspense high.

Cassandra Campbell and Saskia Maarleveld share narrating duties for the newest Beatriz Williams historical novel, which involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's stay in the Bahamas during WWII. The story jumps between three time periods, and although Campbell and Maarleveld both narrate capably, the frequent shifts are confusing. Campbell jauntily portrays Lulu Randolph, an aspiring young writer for a society magazine who arrives in the Bahamas to describe the glamour of the Windsors' lifestyle. When Nassau's richest resident is murdered, Lulu--rendered by Campbell as something of a Noir dame--pursues answers. In a European accent, Maarleveld also delivers the the account of a Swiss woman named Elfride, following her from 1900 through WWI, and recounting the lives of her descendants. N.M.C. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine