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Acts of Kindness

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What are the boundaries of love, of human emotion? For Eugenie Elliott who loses her lover and her ability to speak above a whisper all in one terrible moment, this question would appear to have no answer. Everything is gone, except for the baby she is going to have in a few months' time. For Adele Prewitt, well-born, desperately unhappy wife of the manipulative and charming Lawrence, the boundaries have been stretched beyond all endurance -- until Eugenie comes into her life, making an offer to buy the gatehouse on the property. Two very different women find in each other sources of hope, of love, of pure elemental kindness. They help one another through the daily battleground of horrors that has become Del's life, until an act of violence forces them, and everyone around them, to reconsider their understanding of the capacities of human nature. A powerful and revealing look at friendship and its limitless potential.

Paperback

First published December 1, 1979

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About the author

Charlotte Vale Allen

60 books40 followers
Charlotte Vale-Allen was born in Toronto and lived in England from 1961 to 1964 where she worked as a television actress and singer. She returned to Toronto briefly, performing as a singer and in cabaret revues until she emigrated to the United States in 1966.

Shortly after her marriage to Walter Allen in 1970 she began writing and sold her first novel Love Life in 1974. Prior to this book's publication she contracted to do a series of paperback originals for Warner Books, with the result that in 1976 three of her books appeared in print.

Her autobiography, the acclaimed Daddy's Girl, was actually the first book she wrote but in 1971 it was deemed too controversial by the editors who read it. It wasn't until 1980, after she'd gained success as a novelist, that the groundbreaking book was finally published.

One of Canada's most successful novelists, with over seven million copies sold of her 30+ novels, Ms. Allen's books have been published in all English-speaking countries, in Braille, and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

In her writing she tries to deal with issues confronting women, being informative while at the same time offering a measure of optimism. "My strongest ability as a writer is to make women real, to take you inside their heads and let you know how they feel, and to make you care about them."

A film buff and an amateur photographer, Allen enjoys foreign travel. She finds cooking and needlework therapeutic, and is a compulsive player of computer Solitaire. The mother of an adult daughter, since 1970 she has made her home in Connecticut.

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