* Photo credit to The Closet *
So much stuff happens in this story! It’s out of control. There about five hundred people in this book, it gets crazy.
Let’s start with Sophie. She’s hot for stable hand Henry Patman, just like her horny younger sister Melanie, who rants and raves about wanting to bone every dude she sees right in the middle of tea in front of her dad, the duke. But Henry’s only got eyes for Soph. Unfortunately, Sophie’s pop wants his eldest daughter to marry within or above her station in life, and that rules out Patsy. Things turn sour for the couple when the duke learns of Sophie and Henry’s intended elopement, and he has Henry deported to America while Sophie is forced into a loveless marriage. It turns that that Melanie sold her sister out because she was jealous. Way to go, douchebag. So Sophie is—no joke—miserable for the rest of her life.
M
eanwhile, Henry works odd jobs in America and gets in trouble with some loan sharks before winning a Georgia plantation in a card game. In the midst of the Civil War, he raises two sons: fourteen-year-old ignorant racist Sanford and James, who assists with the Underground Railroad, marries a slave, and then stumbles across her dead, pregnant body after she was shot by a Confederate. This book doesn’t pull punches, does it? We even get descriptions of slaves hanging dead from trees. Then he gets home and a manservant tells him his whole family died. It’s reminiscent of Robin Hood’s return in Men In Tights: “My dog? My goldfish Goldy? My cat Pogo?” Then James is all, “Fuck this noise,” and goes out west!
Back in the mother country, Sophie’s daughter Emma grows up, wanting to become an actress, and her mom helps her escape from an arranged marriage to help her pursue that dream. Emma changes her name to Vanessa Saxton and runs into some shitty luck: She nearly gets raped by a casting-couch-casting director, then nearly gets raped again (that same night!) by two hooligans (who make off with her purse with all her savings) and becomes halfheartedly engaged to an Irish bobby before joining a traveling acting troupe and hooking up with her director. Her daughter Phoebe (who doesn’t even get a story) becomes an actress, and then gives birth to another actress, Katherine, who tours America with her acting troupe only to meet James Patman’s son, John. J&K are way into each other, naturally, but on the night of Katherine’s departure, John—a mere barkeep—gets caught up in a robbery and locked in the bar basement—and he’d planned to propose, too! At the same time, Katherine gets a telegram telling her that her entire family just died in a theater fire. Dear God, this family has all the luck.
John eventually marries a saucy Texas cowgirl who dresses like a boy, and they discover oil and make millions. Their son William courts the elegant Helena Howard and woos her with his over-the-top redneck charm. They have a son named Paul, who has a little birthmark shaped like Texas on his arm. But when they take bebe Paul home, they realize that the birthmark has vanished, and Paul’s breathing weird. Then he’s not breathing at all. And Helena can’t have any more kids.
While all this is going on, some nobody kid named Reginald Rainer is working part-time at a five-and-dime, and his boss was Mr. Mc—um, Gonzalez. Anyway, Reg is poor as dirt and has to work to support his family (who all look nothing like him—dun dun dun!), but Mr. Gonzalez puts him through Harvard and Reginald winds up working for William, who invites him over for dinner. Helena becomes obsessed with how much alike William and Reg look alike, and winds up doing some detective work only to discover that HARK!: The Patman baby and the Rainer baby were switched at birth! There’s an heir to the Patman throne after all. Whew, that was a close one.
Back to Katherine. She married a producer and their only daughter Cassandra grows up to become a doctor. Cass goes to work in a military hospital, where she meets wounded soldier Spencer Light. They get married but Spencer dies and she has his miscarriage. (I’m so succinct!) Cassandra marries his buddy Peter Vanderhorn (I’m having deja vu), and they have Marie, who gets engaged to Hank Patman but dumps him in a letter because she has leukemia and doesn’t want to burden him. Hank consoles himself by nearly marrying Alice Robertson, but you know that story: She dumps him for a Wakefield, naturally. A year later, Marie and Hank stumble upon each other again and Marie finally tells him the truth and then they get married and birth bebe Bruce, and “this town will never be the same!” Let a lifetime of arrogance and date raping begin!
Other Notes:
- Just who is this mysterious cousin of Bruce’s named “Shred,” according to the family tree?
- No one died in childbirth or was thrown from a horse in this story! The ghostwriter really restrained him/herself this time. I was holding my breath, too.
- The book does not address how and why Marie Vanderhorn wound up becoming the nasty ol’ harpy we all know and shun. You’d think that teetering on the precipice of death would give her a sort of benevolence, but, well, no.
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