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Standish by Erastes

Our story opens in England in the 1820s after the Napoleonic wars. Standish is a beautiful manor as well as the name of the once noble family who used to own it before gambling it away to the Goshawk family two generations back.

Our hero Ambrose Standish studies far into the night though he's weak from his last bout of ague. He and his two sisters are the last of the Standish family; they live in a cottage on the grounds, and worry that the absent Goshawk heir may evict them if he ever returns to England.  Guess what? The sisters receive word that young widower Rafe Goshawk plans to return from the Continent to raise his young son in England; of course they are filled with apprehension.  Ambrose tries to force down his wounded pride at the thought of someone claiming his house.  Until now, he has been a sheltered and naïve young man who could not get over his obsession with the Standish manor.  He now recognizes that he must make the best of a precarious situation. He resolves to present himself as a possible tutor for Goshawk's son.  It could furnish himself and his sisters with much-needed income.

Chapters 2 through part of 4 slip into Rafe Goshawk's viewpoint and memories of a hellish childhood. When he was only sixteen, Rafe fell in love with his male tutor Quinn and tried to seduce the man – only to get caught by his harsh and demanding father.  The senior Goshawk drove Quinn away and handed Rafe over to a sadistic new tutor Simon Mauvaise who molded him into the bitter, arrogant, and impatient man he is today. Though Rafe married briefly and fathered a son whom he loves, he strongly prefers men as sexual partners; in London, he visits a malicious former lover Francis, a cavalry officer who is determined to win him back.  But even Rafe's annoyance with Francis and the Standish family whom he has yet to meet (he hopes they won't be "a problem") cannot distract him from his primary concern at the moment: securing his son a good and kind tutor.

I see a potential match made in heaven.  So does Rafe when he arrives at the manor and happens to catch sight of Ambrose, whom he doesn't yet know, swimming naked in a secluded pond. Later, when he meets Ambrose and realizes that the beautiful young man is the Standish heir, he is intrigued and amused by Ambrose's ill-concealed dislike. Ambrose turns out to be both highly educated and good with children, so Rafe does go ahead and hire him as a tutor.  Now, one expects, the slow unfolding of a love affair can commence between these two young men who are obviously attracted to each other and are now living in close proximity to one another.

That right there would be great, but Standish has higher ambitions. The love affair does commence, but then the book throws its focus wide and turns into something bigger. The two lovers journey to the Continent. Several different plot threads emerge: intrigue, deceit, tragic misunderstanding, and the return of evil from the past.  The lovers get driven apart, and one experiences desperately hard times, and then falls for somebody else (a terrific minor character).  For me, the characters are the key to enjoying a book, and I'll admit that I read through this one, wondering if I would ever like Ambrose and Rafe. However, they both evolve in a real-life fashion not often found in fiction and develop into more complex personalities possessing empathy, inner strength, and compassion previously lacking.

So Standish turns out to be an unusual book.  The writing itself is terrific. The tone is lush and melodramatic in the tradition of the gothic romance, but the action is gritty and realistic:  this is not a great time period to be alive unless you're wealthy and powerful. (Warning:  there are scenes of nonconsensual sex.) The historical details are convincing and richly textured without slowing the book's pacing. The ending comes together with unusual emotional power; here at ObsidianBookshelf.com, I closed the book at last with a sense of exhilaration, and thought, Wow, I'm glad I read this.

Relevant Links: Historical Fiction   The Phoenix by Ruth Sims Which One of Two Lovers Did I Like Best and Why? Standish is  available at Amazon:   Standish

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