Miss Whittier Makes a List
by Carla Kelly

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Book Reviews of Miss Whittier Makes a List

Book Review: A Kelly about which I have mixed feelings...
Summary: 3 Stars

MISS WHITTIER MAKES A LIST is one of those books. I had mixed feelings about the naval part of it, although it was beautifully done, and it awoke in me the desire to read more nautical fiction (after which I know a lot more about what a typical British captain in this period would be like). The heroine was spunky, funny, and a Quaker. I love Quaker heroines, starting probably with Laura Kinsale's Maddie in FLOWERS FROM THE STORM. [Heck, I like heroines whose religious and social background differ considerably from the heroine. Making the heroine the daughter of an (Anglican) vicar is easy. Making her a Methodist or a Quaker is a lot harder].

Hannah Whittier is the daughter of a merchant family, a family of American Quakers who make their fortune from shipping and overseas trade. She is American, a Quaker, very young, and somewhat naive. Captain Sir Daniel Sparks is English, presumably an Anglican, the younger son of a peer, somewhat older, and far from naive. (Or so I would assume). What could bring these two people together? How about a little spot of impressment, a method whereby the British navy resorted to manning ships out of desperation, with experienced seamen being at a premium. One of the best places to go looking was on British merchant ships; but American ships would do at a pinch, given that many British-born seamen took positions there. Impressing seamen off American ships was one of the causes of the War of 1812, and this book is set just a few years before that.

Hannah's ship (on her way to meet a suitor) is waylaid by Captain Sir Daniel Spark's ship, and some men are impressed. Hannah considers this atrocious, as do all the Americans. It is a fact of life, however, in the Royal Navy, and for that matter in the British merchant navy and British privateers. Later on, Hannah's ship is attacked by a French privateer, and Hannah is the only survivor picked up some days later by Sparks's ship.

The story takes place partly on shipboard where Hannah makes a series of discoveries about Sparks and his crew and wins their affections. It then moves to enemy territory where Sparks and his crew are taken prisoner. At some point, Hannah will meet the future Duke of Wellington (albeit under a slightly erroneous title, a rare mistake by the author). Don't worry; at the end, Hannah and her captain meet up and are presumably about to be married.

When I first read this, I knew little about the British navy, and thus I oohed and aahed over the book. After reading a series of fictional and non-fiction books (beginning with Hornblower and all the way down to a biography of Nelson), I have a better way to judge the merits of the book. And, I had to compare the book in my mind to Laura London's THE WINDFLOWER. Somehow, MISS WHITTIER does not stand the test so well. In the London book, the American heroine is captured by British privateers (pirates); in the Kelly book, the American heroine who is also a Quaker is captured by a well-born British captain of the Royal Navy.

The romance is intriguing, particularly the issue of whether Hannah can be happy so far away from her fellow nationals and her co-religionists, and whether she can be happy with a man whose career keeps him away for so long. I felt that the second issue was serious enough, without the complications of a different nationality and religion. These were not well-addressed by the highly romantic ending. Things fell into place too neatly.
[Well, we do like happy endings in our romances, but still...]

I judge a romance by how well I respond to it initially, and by how well it stands up by itself (are the hero and heroine compatible? are they going to be happy together?) and against other romances of the same type. I liked this book very much at the beginning, and if this were my first Kelly, I would have given it at least a 4 and maybe even a 5. But it is not. And I have questions about the hero and heroine's compatibility, and how well Hannah will stand up to her husband's long absences. There *were* happy marriages (think of the brothers of Jane Austen, for one) but these marriages rarely had so many complications. And, given the other romances and romanticized nautical fiction I have read more recently, I cannot say that this naval Kelly stands up so well.
This is not a bad book by any means, and it is well-written. But, if you are looking for one of Kelly's best, I would recommend her short story "A Christmas Ornament" in a recent Christmas anthology, or among her books, MRS DREW PLAYS HER HAND (for a heroine who is a widow) or the tear-jerking SUMMER CAMPAIGN, or perhaps LIBBY'S LONDON MERCHANT (with its comically bumbling hero) and the sequel ONE GOOD TURN (published recently).

Rated: 3.5 (downgraded from 4 stars earlier this year)

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