The Outcast

Morland Dynasty #21

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

1857 - The American Civil War

At Morland Place, Benedict's peaceful life is overset when a mysterious orphan arrives. No-one can understand why he takes this waif into the household, but the strain his arrival causes forces Benedict to take the boy to America, to join his much-missed daughter Mary. There Benedict becomes enamoured of the Southern way of life, just as bitter civil war is about to destroy it forever.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Historical, Fiction, Romance

594 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles (aka Emma Woodhouse, Elizabeth Bennett)

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born on 13 August 1948 in Shepherd's Bush, London, England, where was educated at Burlington School, a girls' charity school founded in 1699, and at the University of Edinburgh and University College London, where she studied English, history and philosophy.

She had a variety of jobs in the commercial world, starting as a junior cashier at Woolworth's and working her way down to Pensions Officer at the BBC.

She wrote her first novel while at university and in 1972 won the Young Writers' Award with The Waiting Game. The birth of the MORLAND DYNASTY series enabled Cynthia Harrod-Eagles to become a full-time writer in 1979. The series was originally intended to comprise twelve volumes, but it has proved so popular that it has now been extended to thirty-four.

In 1993 she won the Romantic Novelists' Association Romantic Novel of the Year Award with Emily, the third volume of her Kirov Saga, a trilogy set in nineteenth century Russia.

Reviews

[Liz Henry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book gets pretty gross as slavery is glossed over and it's way sympathetic to the slaveowners and the Confederacy. I'll see if the next books improve - love the earlier one but this one stopped me cold. It is likely just fine to skip it entirely...

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book in which I was almost rooting for the south. That is why I gave it five stars, I have never read a book before that made me have sympathy and some understanding for where the South was coming from. One thing I have noticed about this series is that the first husband has to die be it from disease, war, murder, whatever because the woman can't be happy until the first husband is dead.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book makes me think that maybe British historical fiction writers maybe shouldn't be allowed to write about American history. Sadly, Ms. Harrod-Eagles probably read Gone With the Wind way too many times and fell hook, line, and sinker for the myth of the heroic Southern Cause.

[Nicola Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous 21st instalment of this brilliant series. Benedict Morland finds himself taking responsibility for an orphaned boy and ends up taking him to the American South to live with his daughter Mary on the plantation owned by the family of the man she has married. They arrive shortly before the commencement of the American Civil War which makes it a really interesting time to read about, especially as it's something I didn't have much knowledge of. Cynthia Harrod-Eagles always combines the facts of history and the fictional Morlands so well. I loved The Outcast and am now looking forward to book 22, The Mirage.

[gardienne_du_feu · Rating 4 out of 5]

An gleich mehreren Stellen stehen im Morland-Clan die Zeichen auf Sturm. Die früher so leidenschaftliche und vertrauensvolle Beziehung zwischen Charlotte und Oliver ist merklich abgekühlt, seit sie aus gesundheitlichen Gründen nicht mehr sein Bett teilen kann. Die anstehende Novellierung des Scheidungsrechts, die Frauen deutlich mehr Rechte einräumen würde als früher, führt dann endgültig zu einem tiefen Zerwürfnis zwischen den beiden, weil Charlotte mit ihrem großen Wunsch nach sozialer Gerechtigkeit natürlich für das neue Gesetz ist und Oliver das überhaupt nicht nachvollziehen kann.

Clan-Familienoberhaupt Benedict wird von der Vergangenheit eingeholt. Nicht von seiner eigenen, sondern von der seiner ersten Frau, die ihn nach Strich und Faden betrogen hat. Das bedeutet problematischen Familienzuwachs in Form des Sohnes, den sie mit ihrem Liebhaber nach der Trennung von Benedict hatte. Lennox hat mittlerweile beide Eltern verloren und steht mittel- und heimatlos da, und er ist ein überraschend sympathischer und cleverer Junge, so dass Benedict zum Entsetzen seiner jetzigen Gattin beschließt, ihm eine Chance zu geben.

Benedicts Tochter Mary hat kurz zuvor ihren Angebeteten geheiratet und ist ihm in die USA gefolgt. Doch schon bald muss sie sich eingestehen, dass der Mann, in den sie bis über beide Ohren verliebt war, kein sonderlich guter Ehemann ist und zu Hause in South Carolina in die althergebrachten Südstaatler-Ansichten verfällt, mit denen er groß geworden ist. Ehefrauen haben den Mund zu halten und dekorativ auszusehen, keine nennenswerte Bildung und schon gar keine eigene Meinung zu haben. Damit kann die gescheite und lernbegierige Mary nur sehr schlecht umgehen und ist überglücklich, als ihr Vater - auch um dem Familienknatsch zu entgehen, den Lennox' Ankunft ausgelöst hat - ihr einen Besuch in der neuen Heimat abstattet.

Der Zeitpunkt dafür ist allerdings ein unglücklicher. Es brodelt zwischen Norden und Süden und schließlich kommt es zum Äußersten, der Bürgerkrieg bricht aus. Zunächst werden die üblichen Parolen ausgegeben, dass es schnell gehen wird, aber der Konflikt ist zäh und langwierig und der Blutzoll entsetzlich. Das wird in einigen Szenen von den Schlachtfeldern mehr als deutlich - Glorifizierung des Krieges kann man der Autorin wahrlich nicht vorwerfen und sie bemüht sich um eine differenzierte Betrachtung der Geschehnisse.

Mir gefiel generell die Ausweitung des Schauplatzes auf die USA sehr, weil er neue Handlungsstränge eröffnet, neue Sichtweisen ins Spiel kommen und neues Personal die Bühne betritt. Natürlich spielt bei einer Südstaatenplantage auch das Thema Sklavenbesitz eine Rolle. Hier fand ich die Darstellung der Sklaven gelegentlich ein wenig platt (vermutlich merkt man da auch, dass das Buch schon einige Jahre auf dem Buckel hat), aber auch hier gab es einige tolle Charaktere, ebenso unter Marys neuen Verwandten.

Die sonst oft recht dominante britische Politik tritt dem gegenüber eher in den Hintergrund und wird sicherlich in einem der nächsten Bände wieder einen größeren Auftritt haben. Dafür bietet der Bürgerkrieg mit seinen schrecklichen Nachwehen aber auch sehr viel Stoff für einen opulenten Roman (und einige herzzerreißende Szenen, ein Wohlfühl-Band ist es nicht). Nach wie vor eine meiner Lieblingsserien im historischen Bereich.

[Boots LookingLand · Rating 1 out of 5]

wow. after reading the two preceding books in this series, this one was an incredible let down. in fact, i think it may have turned me completely off of bothering with ever picking up the series again.

everything about this book is dreadful: the sudden steep change in characters who only a book before were content and now we find them less than a decade later endlessly complaining about their marriages and their finances and their children, etc.

i not only can barely recognize Catherine and Oliver in this book, but i actively hate them.

and then the book goes from bad to worse as we follow Benedict and Lennox to America where we encounter some of the grossest African American stereotypes i've seen in books since the 1800s. also, a "poor" suffering Mary, who happily married Fenwick but now lives a life of hell complaining about having to do sewing for her friend May's wedding while all her slaves are out in the field picking cotton and raising her children. these characters are almost uniformly reprehensible and with the coming of the Civil War, all the "bad" men characters conveniently die so that the women can have new husbands by the end. what the heck am i reading?

words cannot describe my disappointment in this once promising series. : o [

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I have given all of the other (20 so far!) Morland books 5 stars, but this one I will drop to a 3. Not my favorite, and I suspect one could skip it and just go from 20 straight to 22. Two specific complaints. First, the whole Charlotte and Oliver estrangement did not feel that it grew out of the story or either character - more of a contrivance to make Charlotte and"outcast," but to give story to the whole Divorce Act business. It felt manipulative and silly, I mean, Oliver just turns into a jerk and then 20 chapters later is like, oh sorry. So that felt wrong. The second thing I really disliked was all the time spent in South Carolina and especially the way the slaves' dialect is treated. Very GTTW, as others have noticed, and honestly why do only the black characters have these crazily-spelled dialects but the white Southerners appear to speak as normally as any other character? Nevertheless I am giving CH-E the benefit of the doubt on this one, and ordering #22 for my Kindle right now!

[Justin Neville · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems I'm not alone in having major issues with this volume compared with previous books in the series.

It feels really disjointed and unbalanced.
If we were going to spend so much of this novel in America, we should have spent more time getting to know the vast sprawl of characters there and/or it should have been more simply told.
Although there was a small set-up to the American setting in the previous volume with the sudden appearance of Fenwick in England, it definitely felt like the author suddenly realised she needed to make America a major setting for the rest of the series after seemingly forgetting for many volumes that she had planted a branch of the family there many decades earlier.

It didn't - by itself - bother me that the American story was told, very sympathetically, from the Southern / Confederacy side of the Civil War (that made it more enlightening for me, in fact). But the depiction (and clumsy speech) of the slave population felt crass and one-dimensional.

[Patti · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is by far my least favourite book so far in the series. The presentation of slavery at best minimizes the horrors of the system and at worst presents it as a beneficial situation for the enslaved. I have been reading the books in the series one after the other but I think I shall take a break and read something else. I might read the next volume at some future time as I have greatly enjoyed the series thus far.

[Hilary Hosek · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love all of the other Morland Dynasty books and have read them many, many times. But this one is hard to take. I don’t care if the book is sympathetic to the confederacy, but the portrayal of people who were enslaved is disappointing and very one-sided, something we don’t usually see in this author’s other work. Other groups of serving people in the books generally show a range of competency, intelligence, etc. In this books, all of the enslaved people are pretty much portrayed as stupid and lazy. The worst part is the section where Mary is portrayed as being worn out with having to manage all of these people. Even if that is reflective of how white women (who had enslaved people) felt, this attitude really didn’t fit with Mary’s prior character development. And then the way the author weaved in supporting the confederacy as a means of bringing Charlotte and Oliver back together was ridiculous. And that whole story line of Oliver believing that Charlotte was cheating on him was just plain silly. Again, the other books in this series are amazing. But feel free to give this one a pass.

[Jane Irish Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I've mentioned before regarding this series, it is best to begin at the beginning, to understand who everyone it.

In 1857, Benedict feels obligated to take in a young orphan, but no one else is his household welcomes Lennox, so, two years later, the two of them set off for America to visit Benedict's daughter Mary, arriving in a country on the verge of war.

Back in England, Charlotte and Oliver's marriage is disintegrating, especially when they find themselves on opposite sides regarding the Marriage Bill, which Charlotte's stepfather is promoting.

The book moves back and forth between England and America, covering the years of the devastating. American Civil War. Very hard to put down, despite knowing how the War itself ends, I wanted so badly to see just what happened to these characters! Recommended.

[Rita Chapman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cythia Harrod-Eagles has written a great many books, including the Morland Dynasty a 34-part series!
The Outcast refers to an orphaned boy sent from England to America to be raised.
Set around the American Civil War the story around the characters is so strong as to overcome my natural dislike of reading about war.
Apart from the family and love stories interwoven throughout the book there is the plight of women in that era – mere chattels to their husband. They can be beaten or starved at their husband’s whim and everything they own on marriage immediately becomes their husband’s and they are without any means of support of their own even if they were previously very wealthy.
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is an excellent author and I am looking forward to reading more of her stories.

[Sharon Bail · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve actually read through the whole series a few times. Historical fiction is my favorite genre. Admittedly, I glossed over battles and political stuff after the first read. This one follows some of the characters into the US and the onset of the Civil War. These characters live in the South, but have English roots. For me, a New Englander to the bone, this was an interesting book because the war is all described from English and southern viewpoints. Very different.

[B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing Series

I read this series many years ago and started from the beginning again six months ago. The story of the Morland family through time is a great concept with strong characters and excellent historical research.

[Alyson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is some Lost Cause, Daughters of the Confederacy revisionist bullshit.

[TONI HARRIS · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its great to be back reading the Morland Saga - book 21 The Outcast takes place in America during the Civil War a good read especially as I do love history

[Carolyn Agosta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is #21 in the Morland Dynasty series and the first to spend so much time out of England. It takes place during the American Civil War, and about half the book is about characters who are in the Charleston, South Carolina area during the war. The other half is about characters back home in York and Manchester.

The Civil War part of the story was interesting and well-written, although any fan of Gone with the Wind will find some parts similar - but how could they not be? What's done well is the English-born Mary's reaction to slavery and how women's lives were lived in the upper-class Southern homes, also well-written was a battle scene involving an in-law of Mary's - a first-person scene that was NOT something found in GWTW.

The part of the story that took place in England was also interesting, covering the changing of laws regarding divorce, although I felt that the problems between Charlotte and Oliver were a little contrived and out-of-the-blue, written to highlight the divorce issues. It also covers some of the problems for England during the Civil War - the loss of cotton shipments for their mills, which caused a great deal of hardship, and the debate about whether England should support the South.

One thing that puzzled me - on Cynthia Harrod-Eagles website, the blurb about this book includes mention of the Underground Railway - which I don't remember seeing in the book at all. Nevertheless, I love this series of books and will immediately be ordering the next volume!

[Winifred · Rating 4 out of 5]

the continuing saga of the morland family.benedict moreland takes lennox to america to be with his sister as his father is dead. his sister does not know about this brother as she thinks benedict is her father. when benedict is in america the onset of the civil war begins, but he is able to get out and home to england. mary looses her husband in the war. the plantation is also burnt by marauders and she kills a man to safe herself from being raped. charlotte is also going through a dificult time with her husband. whist she is helping at a soup kitchen she finds fanny. the divorce bill is also passed through parliament.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the Morlands leaves England with his illegitimate son for the American South, where his daughter is living. They all get caught up in the Civil War.

[Edith Clayton · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while since I read this, but I remember that the whole stay in America seemed a little contrived, so I'm giving 4 instead of 5 stars.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting perspective of the American Civil War from the British.

[Becca Braddock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too much about the American civil war

[Chrissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with all the books in this series this book was terrific. But what I particularly loved was living through (via these characters) the American civil war from a southern point of view. I've always been taught about the civil war from a northern point of view and having my heritage always being from the north felt allegiance to that perspective. So to see things from these character's perspectives and understand more deeply the beliefs and reasons behind the folks of the south brought a vivid richness to that war in my mind. It also made clear that the evils of war were on both sides and neither side acted uprightly which was easier to understand when I was feeling the feelings of a southern person. I truly appreciated Harrod-Eagles writing from this perspective for the book. Excellent read!