This is my first Grace Livingston Hill novel that has a mysterious death and quick to judgement scenario which was quite interesting, even at the end certain things are left hanging but overall satisfaction. "Ariel Custer" is a romantic story with a religious message which I especially enjoyed. The so called "Christian" and the Christian who walks the walk with Christ.
Story in short - Ariel must find her way in a new city and runs into many obstacles but keeps her faith in God which gives her peace but what happens when things get really tough?
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Suddenly the tears blurred into her eyes, and her white throat stirred hysterically. It seemed as if she could not bear it. All that was left of the dear old home, every memento of her precious father and mother and frail little grandmother who had lingered longest with her on the earth, was packed into the rickety wagon and going down the
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road to storage. Ariel caught her breath and turned quickly inside the door.
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Ariel was one of those rare girls somehow left over from what the world whimsically calls with a smile and a sneer “the Victorian Age,” though it is to be doubted if even the Victorian Age saw many like her.
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Then she hoped to escape to the station without more difficulty. There had been invitations to breakfast in plenty, and also to stay overnight, but Ariel had declined them all on the ground that there were things to do at the house and she would not have time in the morning to stop for a formal breakfast. She had not let anyone know that her last night was to be spent alone in the old house. They had thought that Dinah, the old faithful servant, was to be with her, or there would have been protests too strenuous
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to resist; but Dinah had had opportunity to ride to her new home with a farmer who was driving that way the afternoon before, and the girl had insisted upon her going. In fact, she had been glad to be alone for those last hours. Somehow they seemed too sacred for even Dinah to intrude upon. And so she had spent the night alone in the old country home, empty of all furniture save the few things she had saved for her own, which had gone down the road that very morning to be
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stored indefinitely at Ezra Brownleigh’s house for her.
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I was so happy that this had a happy ending but what about Rebecca whose ending was so tragic, if that was her body found. It seemed she had wanted to cool down where Emily had a day before but she was not able to move while in the water. I don't think it was suicide but either an accident or murder. Who would have murdered her? It seemed her face was bruised? Unanswered questions! I was glad that Emily finally was able to marry Nate. That was so romantic and sweet. She is in her forties and a baby could be possible. I was glad Ariel and Judson were able to marry and he was touched with Christ. It seemed that Harriet might soften up a bit but I think it is impossible for her to ever be a sweet mother. What a mother she was having her lawyers look to accuse her son and Ariel of murder!
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The minister had written to a cousin of his in the North who was librarian in a big city library, and she had promised to take Ariel in and teach her to be a librarian. The minister had felt that the many years spent in her father’s library reading to him and browsing among his fine collection of literary gems had well fitted her for such a position, and she was looking forward with a sad anticipation to the joy of handling books once more. Her father’s books had been sold three years before to provide
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the necessities of life for herself and her grandmother during her grandmother’s last lingering illness. Even the money from the books was every cent gone now. Ariel longed for books, and she felt that a life spent among them would not be like a life exactly among utter strangers. There were sure to be some old friends among the volumes.
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But she was not let to leave her hometown absolutely uncheered. Miss Sallie Gibbons was standing on the platform anxiously looking up the road for her as she crossed the tracks, with a little box of hot beaten biscuits, cold chicken, and pound cake for her lunch. She had sat up half the night preparing it. Ezra Brownleigh, too, hobbled down five minutes before the northbound train to wish her Godspeed.
*** Ariel Custard has to leave her home because she has no funds and must work. A position in a library is found for her in another town, after her grandmother's death.
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Judson Granniss had always been a lonely boy. From his birth his mother had tried to dominate him, as she had always dominated his father. She spent her time in shooing him away from almost everything he wanted to do or think or be. And much of the time she succeeded, because he had inherited from his father a gentle, kindly, unselfish nature. But because he was also her child and
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had as strong a will as hers, there were times when he became like adamant, and then there was war between them. Strangely enough, at such times Judson reminded her of her dead husband, whose gentle, kindly nature had yielded to her will except on rare occasions when the matter at issue concerned someone else, and then he too became adamant. Judson’s father was a dreamer, by nature an inventor, who had by stern integrity and patient perseverance added to a small inheritance until in the small country town where they lived when Judson was a child, he had become a power. Then one day he loaned a large sum of money to an old schoolmate, Jake Dillon by name, who came to him with a tale of a fortune in jeopardy and a motherless child. For the sake of the motherless child, Joe Granniss loaned him enough money to set him upon his feet. Jake Dillon became a rich man, and Joe Granniss died a very poor one, because he had trusted his old friend and had loaned the money without security.
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Joe Granniss closed his kindly thin lips and lived the remainder of his chastened days with very few words, and a wearied look on his prematurely aging face. He didn’t fall sick but he failed from day to
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day, and one morning he didn’t get up.