Cherrybrook Rose

June 1, 2008
Crosse delivers readers to ableak company town in 1875, justa few miles fromtheCherrybrook gunpowder mills, "slap in the middle of the great wilderness of Dartmoor and even lonelier." There live Henry Maddiford, mill manager, and Rose, the grown daughter hes raised and indulged since her mothers death in childbirth. At fourteen hundred feet above sea level and surrounded by desolate moor, life isa struggle in this areabuffeted by biting cold and snow in the winters punctuated by sunless, rainy summers. Rose devours books by Austen and Dickens and gallops (astride, if you please!) over the lonelymoors on her devilish black horse, Gospel. Her encounter with an anguished prisonersets the stage fora mill explosion and reversal of fortune that forces her to leave the freedom of the moor and its "boundless sense of infinity" for the townand marriage to a man who strives to contain her wild spirit. With its strong sense of place and headstrong heroine, Crosses absorbing historical is a readers and filmmakers dream.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)