The Belle of Bowling Green

About the book

Sapphira Bloommaert belongs to a prosperous household near Bowling Green, where family standing and domestic tradition help determine the expectations placed upon a young woman. As New York prepares for war with Britain, public enthusiasm enters the family's private world through uniforms, military gatherings, and competing ideas of duty. Sapphira's cousin Annette resents the interruption of fashionable pleasures, while their grandmother remembers the personal losses concealed beneath patriotic celebration. Barr moves between these generations to show how the same crisis can appear as adventure, inconvenience, or a return of grief. Courtship develops within that changing atmosphere, and the richly described houses preserve a picture of the city's Dutch inheritance even as national conflict presses their inhabitants toward new decisions.

• Family and courtship
• War and remembrance
• Urban heritage

Why read it

The different generations' reactions to war give the historical romance a perspective beyond public celebrations.

English A. L. Burt text with the 1904 Dodd, Mead copyright statement