Touch-me-not

Touch-Me #1

by Anne Hepple

The blow of her father's death falls all the harder on Lindsay MacClane Lee, for she had been used to the best things of life, and he dies leaving her practically penniless. She is left to face the bitter struggle of life with the additional responsibility of bringing up her three-year-old brother. The struggle is a hard one, especially when she obtains a position which necessitates her leaving her brother for days on end; and very much against her will she is forced to accept the hospitality of her guardian. Before he died, her father named Neil MacKinnon as the guardian of Lindsay and her brother, and although she had never seen him before, the MacClane blood in her, a heritage from her mother, rebelled against this, for the MacClanes and the MacKinnons were sworn enemies. The clash of wills between the determined Lindsay and the proud and fearless head of the MacKinnnon clan was inevitable, but the story is a stirring one, and the solution to this conflict will find a place in the heart of every reader.

192 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Anne Hepple Dickinson, née Batty, wrote romantic novels under the pseudonym Anne Hepple. She was born in Widdrington, Northumberland, England and lived most of her life in and around Berwick and Berwickshire. She was the first editor of The Woman's Magazine in London from 1931 to 1934. A number of her short stories appeared in the magazine, and some of her novels were serialized there before being published in book form.

It was after her children grew up and all her older relations had died, that Anne began to publish her novels, which often drew on incidents from her own experience.

She was the sister of Agnes Ancroft.

Reviews

[scarlettraces · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost a parody of the usual Hepple output, with a pointlessly resistant heroine, an aggravatingly strong & silent hero, and an irritatingly cherubic toddler thrown in for good measure. (The casual racism and classism alas is standard, I ignore this (with discomfort) for the sake of the 30s Hepple romance experience.)

[Holding Name · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spoilers:

There are a couple of scenes of racism which mar this book, the rating is for the rest of the book. The countryside settings and sense of adventure are good, but the book contains probably the author's most unlikeable couple. The hero is overbearing to the point of controlling. The heroine has plenty of reason to censure him, but usually behaves in a childish way when reprimanding him and manages to miss the point of why he is being unreasonable.

There's an unpleasant scene where, for totally contrived reasons, the hero forces the heroine to leave her 3 year old brother alone in a cottage whilst he takes her home during a snowstorm. (The brother is fine, but it seems to be making the point that the hero knows best and can just ignore the heroine's distress) There's also a ridiculously unlikeable 'rival' and the heroine idiotically persuades herself that the hero and rival are in love despite all evidence to the contrary.

Incidentally, I'm 99% sure that the book which is supposedly second in this series does not exist!