Savannah Purchase

Purchas Family #1

by Jane Aiken Hodge

As children, Juliet and Josephine often played the innocent game of impersonation. They were cousins, but they looked enough alike to be twins.

Life and war separated them, but the years didn't dim the astonishing resemblance.

Now Fate suddenly threw them together again -- two beautiful, desirable women playing out a deadly masquerade.

Set against the elegance, splendor and gentility of the early 19th-century South, this is a suspenseful tale of high intrigue and dangerous deception.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance, Historical Romance, Historical, Fiction, Gothic, Regency

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Jane Aiken Hodge was born in the USA, brought up in the UK and read English at Oxford. She received a master's degree from Radcliffe College, Harvard University.

Before her books became her living she worked as a civil servant, journalist, publishers' reader and a reviewer.

She has written lives of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer as well as a book about women in the Regency period, PASSION AND PRINCIPLE. But her main output has been over twenty historical novels set in the eighteenth century, including POLONAISE, THE LOST GARDEN, and SAVANNAH PURCHASE, the beloved third volume of a trilogy set during and after the American War of Independence. More recently she has written novels for Severn House Publishers.

She enjoys the borderland between mystery and novel, is pleased to be classed as a feminist writer, and is glad that there is neither a glass ceiling nor a retiring age in the writers' world. She was the daughter of Conrad Aiken and sister of Joan Aiken.

Reviews

[Alexis Hall]

So, this has not aged well I think.

First off, it’s set in the antebellum south which … on the other hand, interesting change of pace for a Regency. On the other hand, HERO IS ACTUAL PLANTATION OWNER.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s One Of The Good Ones who has freed all the slaves and the slaves are so grateful they’ve stuck around anyway. I think it is implied he’s paying them now, which is nice? But also ignores the major economic reality of plantations, which is that they’re incredibly labour intensive, to the point of being non-sustainable unless you force some people you’ve kidnapped to do the work for free.

Anyway, the deal here is that Josephine and Juliette are notably similar-looking cousins who fled France following Napoleon’s defeat. From there, Josephine married a rich planation owner, and Juliette ended up all impoverished and shit. Then Josephine reappears in Juliet’s life and wants them to play life-swapsies for a while so … and I am absolutely not shitting you here … she can buy a ship and hire a crew to launch a rescue mission to Elba in order to free Napoleon.

The only complication here, apart from the fact it’s an entirely batshit plan, is Josephine is married and blatantly evil. But Juliet doesn’t have choice except to take up the mantle of Josephine’s life, where it quickly becomes apparent that she is awful, everybody hates her, her relationship with her husband has gone to the dogs, she is extremely materialistic, and also she’s banging anything that moves. This leads to a duel in which the husband is shot and a long sequence in which Juliet has to nurse him back to health.

It’s a bit weird because while the husband (I’m sorry he’s so bland I can’t even remember his name – I think it might be Hyde? Hyde Something Orother) has the cool grey eyes and duel-fighting tendencies of a romantic hero … he’s so, like, completely absent. I have no idea what Juliet fell in love with or why. Like, he’s meant to be all ethical and bookish and stuff (and it does come out later that he recognised Juliet wasn’t Josephine instantly, which put some weight behind his much-vaunted smarts) but I just found him the blahest of the blah. And Juliet was, well, she was fine? But most of the book her internal monologue goes: I was about to say this very normal human thing but then I remembered I was supposed to be Josephine. I gave a tinkling laugh. “La, I can’t imagine anything so tedious.”

Also if I’d been playing a drinking game where I had to take a shot every time someone said “I cry pardon” or “you look fagged” I’d be an alcoholic by now.

The plot resolves itself when it turns out Josephine is already married to a dashing French dude who was captured by the Russians and believe to be dead, but then is not dead after all. So it’s decided that they’ll run off together and Juliet will just, like, be Josephine for the rest of her life. Which is pretty weird, but whatever. What really pushed me into the Absolutely Not Okay category is that there’s a scene where Josephine is being mean (because she’s blatantly evil) and her French dude slaps her and is like, enough from you. And then he’s all like, I can see you haven’t been keeping her in line. And well…



So yes. Juliet lives happily ever after pretending to be someone else with one of the most boring men to ever grace a fictional page and Josephine is dispatched to Europe with a spousal abuser.

[Emmy B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh book, how I hate thee, let me count the ways...

This is generally recommended to fans of Georgette Heyer, but instead of the expected historical romp, with funny repartee, misunderstandings, silliness, growing on the part of one of the MCs, lively secondary characters, historical detail that colours the world in which this takes place, this turd delivers a milquetoast heroine; a hero who is a non-entity, whose personality and looks are so nondescript that I wondered if perhaps the author just left that space as a placeholder until she came up with an actual character, only forgot to then do so; a premise that is preposterous in the extreme; and a cartoonish villain. There is no plot. The dialogue is wooden, graceless, boring and lacks even a hint of an attempt at wit. To recommend this to fans of Georgette Heyer is like recommending panto to fans of Shakespeare.

Two cousins who look alike decide to do a switch, so that the insane, villain cousin (whom our moral, just, beautiful and perfect heroine somehow still likes) can go away and do something stupid somewhere, it doesn’t matter what (although whatever she is up to sounded much more interesting than anything that was happening with holier-than-thou cousin, but anyway...). So the good twin, Juliet, agrees to impersonate her stupid twin, Josephine. Josephine is married, but neither her husband, Hyde, nor the servants suspect anything when the twin replace each other, even though Juliet is the polar opposite of Josephine: kind, considerate, intelligent, caring and seems to give a damn about the husband, unlike his actual wife. Somehow this tips nobody off, because Juliet says something stupid once in a while to remind everyone that she is the stupid twin.

Time passes really quickly, there is the requisite duel, which seems pointless anyway, but the husband is wounded, and Juliet saves his life (of course). But then, before the husband is recovered, Josephine returns, and of course all the servants love Juliet at this point, and Josephine goes to parties instead of taking care of her husband, because she is a cartoonish villain.

As you read on, questions start piling up in your head, and not the good kind of questions, the answers to which you wait for breathlessly, no, they're the frustrating sort of questions, which make reading this book impossible, because they are the fundamental building blocks of this story, and without a good explanation you've no reason to care for anything that happens:

1. Why the hell does Juliet agree to the scheme? Josephine said she’d help her out financially whether Juliet agreed to the switcheroo or no, so Juliet has exactly 0 motive to do something so against her morals and character.
2. How does nobody recognise the switch? They are cousins, not identical twins. It’s impossible that their voices are alike, their mannerisms, the way they laugh, the way they smell, eat, drink, dance, the sort of things that make them laugh… a thousand things! The notion that a husband wouldn’t recognise that his wife had switched places with her cousin is beyond preposterous. And yes, Hyde and Josephine are estranged, but they do live together and see each other every day.
3. Why the hell did Hyde marry Josephine in the first place? He is a saint (described so in the book, I kid you not) and she is a selfish moron. They have nothing in common, don’t seem to like each other, aren’t even attracted to each other… what the hell happened there?
4. Why does Hyde duel Fonseca? It’s implied of course that Josephine had an affair with him, but Heyer heroes who dealt with similar problems were able to do so without bringing a whole lot of scandal on their heads, why can’t this guy? Stupid mofo.

Ugh, so many things that annoyed me, but these are the main ones because they are the pillars on which this story rests, and the motivations here are just… just absent really. I mean why? Honestly, author, why?

Mostly what was missing was a firm narrative voice – something to describe the scenes to you, to explain the motivations, whether they are real or perceived, something to guide you through the story, keep you hooked with a central mystery or a central problem that needs solving, while little things happen around it. Instead, you have the virtuous heroine, who is competent at all things womanly, who has no personality, whom you are supposed to root for because she is virtuous. Also a dull virtuous hero, who is also wonderful and has all the charisma of a wet sponge. Juliet falls in love with him the moment she sets eyes on him (pretty much), so there’s no relationship development. Essentially they are perfect for each other and Josephine’s in the way.

I guess I was kind of attracted to the setting of this novel, but actually this turned out to be a big mistake. The attitude to black people in this book is straight from Gone With the Wind. Sure there are black people who are servants, but don’t you, reader, worry your pretty little head over them, they’re all there voluntarily, because our hero had freed them all and they all stayed because they just lurved him so much. Ugh. Sure. Who wouldn’t want to clean this guys poop out of his chamber pot? Sign me up! In Georgette Heyer social inequality is there, of course, and there are servants, as is period-appropriate, but they had personalities, and they had a purpose in the plot of the novel. I am not saying that Georgette Heyer’s attitude to them in her stories is progressive, I am only saying that from the perspective of story telling they are treated like people, with agency, who affect things, who have their own problems, their own families, wants, needs, lives, pasts, ambitions, likes and dislikes etc. Here we just have a bunch of smiling faces, whose only care in the world is their Master. And it’s worse than in Heyer’s world, of course, because they are former slaves. The novel tells you that Hyde freed them, but there is no mention of whether he paid them for their years of free servitude, and if their lot had in fact improved in any material way. It’s just a side issue, and, more insulting than anything else, it’s a side issue used solely for the purpose of emphasising our hero’s goodness.

The writing isn't bad, as in the sentences are grammatical and clearly the author is a literate person, but it is bad in the story-telling sense. It completely misses the point of these kinds of stories, and delivers nothing of what could reasonably be expected of it. Worst of all, it is just a chore to read.

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re a fan of stories like Georgette Heyer’s and Mary Stewart’s romances, Jane Aiken Hodge’s All For Love should be right up your alley. Featuring a historical setting and context, it follows two cousins, alike enough to be twins, who switch places while one executes a madcap scheme to rescue Napoleon, while preserving her reputation and giving herself an alibi in the form of her cousin’s presence. Of course, it stretches credulity a bit, as all such plots would — but it doesn’t stretch it too far; actually, a fair number of people figure out that Juliet is only impersonating Josephine.

The process of Juliet’s relationship with Josephine’s husband is sweet; the way he carefully provides for her without ever pushing boundaries too much or letting her know that he knows she’s not Josephine, and the way they come to care for each other and refuse to do anything about it, because of course, he’s married to Josephine. Then, of course, someone from Josephine’s past shows up to overturn things once more…

It’s all reliant on heaps of lucky coincidence, of course, and Josephine is such an unpleasant person in some ways that you know, really, how it’s going to end — I never really had any tension that it wasn’t going to work out, though I did find myself wondering how it would work out. The writing isn’t as witty as Heyer’s, nor is there a sense of place evoked as in Stewart’s work, but all the same I got quite invested and very much enjoyed the read.

Oh, and if duels and secret plots entertain you, there’s plenty of that alongside the romance.

Originally reviewed here.

[Diane Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two cousins, alike enough to be twins, switch places. From the plantation Winchelsea to the grand house on Oglethorpe Square in Savannah, these two hatch quite a scheme. Josephine, the older of the two, is the brains behind this plot. Or is she? Can they pull it off and at what cost? I really liked this book, the descriptions were wonderful. I think, by the description, the pride of India trees must be what we know as crape myrtles. Love those live oaks with spanish moss.

[CLM · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be my favorite of all Jane Aiken Hodge's work. I have always loved impersonation stories, and this one is the story of cousins Josephine and Juliet, brought up in Napoleon's France, but now living in America. Josephine is married to Hyde Purchase, a Savannah landowner, but is determined to finance a mission to rescue Napoleon from imprisonment. She asks cousin and practically twin Juliet to take her place so her husband won't know of the rescue mission. Penniless, Juliet accepts, only to fall in love with her cousin's husband.

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it--I'd give a sixth star just for the Jane Austen references if I could! :)

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Identical Cousins Switch Places

Lovely Regency Romance set in Savannah, where the rich Mr. Hyde Purchis has married the very french Josephine. Josephine married for wealth and is immensely bored and quite shallow, but she does have one plan. She's planning to use her husband's money to buy a ship and free Napoleon from St. Helena. To do this she talks her cousin who is her twin in looks, to temporarily take her place at home. The rest of the story takes off from there. Absolutely great, as poor Juliet tries to cover for her with the little information her thoughtless cousin provided. Great story and a very satisfactory ending.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This is a solid book. Well written with no major flaws. Well other than the ludicrous notion that one cousin could replace another and not have anyone notice simply because they look identical. But if that set-up is too ridiculous for anyone then they should not be reading this book.

I quite liked the husband and how he dealt with all the circumstances he found himself in. Juliet was likable and I enjoyed her troubles as she tried to pull off the charade. Josephine is less well drawn but fortunately she was not in it too much.

An all round pleasant read but not probably something I will remember in a few months hence keeping it at 3 stars for GR.

[Jypsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Savannah is my favorite city, so I immediately liked the story. All For Love is a tale of two nearly identical looking women, one rich, one poor, switch lives. It's a cute story with fun and engaging characters and romance. The setting you can imagine is just beautiful, especially for the time period. It's a good read overall.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read. I've read other books by JAH but they were all follow ons for Austen novels. This is my first of her own stories if you like.
Josephine and Juliette are two cousins who could be twins they are so alike. In looks that is, in temperament and character they are poles apart. When Josephine wants to execute a hair brained scheme she ropes Juliette into changing places with her. Juliette is in great need at the time so agrees to it reluctantly. Josephine tells her she and her husband live separate lives more or less and fills her in on details. However, these details fall short and Josephine fails to mention there are also other men in her life to be considered.
I was very interested to see how everything would pan out. I felt for Juliette at times as she was put in impossible positions. You have to suspend your disbelief at times especially towards the end. Things did fall into place rather easily and once or twice I thought 'oh really'!
But all in all a good read and fans of Austen or Heyer will enjoy it. ( Austen's novels feature in it).

[Jane Mercer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Aiken Hodge does write some very good books Savannah Purchase was not one of her best though I did enjoy it. The plot hinges on the resemblance of two cousins alike enough to be twins in looks. Juliet is penniless and recovering from the death of her father Josephine rich, flighty and selfish both of French origin now in New Orleans. Josephine decides she is going to rescue Bonaparte from St Helena but needs to be away from home and her husband to do so, she persuades Juliet to take her place, the marriage is one of convenience and she need not fear advances on that score. Reluctantly Juliet agrees, she is the timid of the pair and this would probably have joined my to collection if I had liked her more, I found Josephine thoroughly unlikeable but since she hardly featured that didn't matter. Juliet was too timid, too nice with not enough depth to her, she falls for her friends husband as expected and I did like the way Hodge solved that without having to eliminate Josephine

[A.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chapters: 15 // Pages: 205

I happen to be a fan of Jane Aiken Hodge. I've, thus far, read six of her books (if memory serves) and have liked each one. She's a truly good 20th-century authoress, who weaves great, entertaining stories with well-researched eras in history, and has a way with creating a brand of romance between hero and heroine that sometimes leaves you wondering if they'll get together in the end.
This book is set in 1800s Savannah, Georgia. Two cousins, who pass for twins, get themselves embroiled in a messy situation rife with mystery, intrigue, and a love triangle as one falls in love with the other's husband and the other tries to rescue Napoleon from incarceration on the island he's sent to after Elba.
Really great story! As always. Also, great action, suspense, and a twist ending.
As with all her books, I can hardly put them down!

[A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, this is my favorite by this author. The story was really good. I loved the whole 'switch places' idea. The characters were great! Loved them. There was plenty of excitement to keep me interested. I also liked that Hodge made it real. They didn't fool Hyde for a second. That was too good. It kind of cracked me up. Oh, that and the fact that Josephine was a bigamist! And that's how they ended up being together. Well done.

[Nikole L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Billed as a modern-day Georgette Heyer---I would have to disagree simply for the lack of wit and complex plots. But this was a cute little story about what happens when identical cousins switch places and one falls in love with the other's husband. It had the same sweetness as The Scarlet Pimpernel.

[Jan]

recommended by Constance, whose recommendations I never ignore!!!

[Margaret Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I forgot that I read this shortly before I went to Savannah/Tybee Island, and realized while I was walking around a museum that one of the scenes took place in the house I was standing in!* So that was weird. The book was okay. A twin (actually a lookalike cousin) takes her "twin's" place in her loveless marriage, the inevitable ensues. A quick read, I had some issues with it (the other "twin's" husband genially slapping her around to get her "under control," presented with apparently no irony whatsoever), but it was an okay read. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was a better preparation for a Savannah visit.

*It's now the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum, and the scene was the one in which Juliet hosted the Scarbrough party, with President Monroe attending.

[MAB LongBeach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mildly romantic impersonation story, set in Savannah in the early 1800s. Originally published in 1971, under the title Savannah Purchase, this holds up reasonably well.

Juliette finds herself destitute after her father dies, so she appeals to her look-alike older cousin Josephine, now married to a wealthy Savannah planter/merchant. Josephine agrees to help, on condition that Juliette switch places with her long enough for Josephine to mount an expedition to free Napoleon from his exile on St. Helena. With no other choices, Juliette reluctantly goes along with the plan. Juliette finds herself growing very fond of her cousin's husband, but fears discovery at any moment and knows that this life will not last.

More historical fiction than romance, with good characterizations.

[Jayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is vintage Hodge: a classic, classy Society adventure of the kind Jane Aiken Hodge did best.

Formerly published as 'Savannah Purchase', it reads as smooth and speedy as if written yesterday, except that the heroine's inner angst-ing is less pronounced than modern novels would have it in similar circumstances. The look at Southern US society and politics of the 1830s feels thoroughly credible even though the central feature of the plot is a bit less easy to swallow.

The tropes are familiar to anyone who read romantic suspense in the 1960s to 1980s. A 'good' woman and a 'bad' woman, a 'good' man and a 'bad' one.

I liked the way Hodge handled the eventual revelation of deception. All the clues were there leading up to it, and I found the story most satisfying to read.

[Adrianna · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was an okay escapist read. Sometimes I wasn't quite sure why I was still reading it because the conversations between characters were so awkward, and the heroine was a little too good, and the heroine's cousin was a little too bad, but something about it was readable enough that made me keep going. The plot was pretty unbelievable and contrived. Gosh! Why did I keep reading this...? Well, the hero was pretty likeable, and the story being set in old "Savanny" was an interesting change from what I usually read. Also, the story did keep moving along at a clipping pace with some interesting new twists to keep you interested, so there's that. A good book for a plane trip where you can pick up and set down at will without having to focus too much on what you're reading.

[Jeri Stofa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun

I read this as a teenager, it is a fun easy read, with mistaken identity, problems to solve, and the usual conflicts is a simple romance. Great read for a simple relaxing moment

[Hannah Cobb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Juliet and Josephine are cousins, daughters of exiled French nobility. AS children they were inseparable, and fond of switching places to confuse the nuns at their convent school. So when Josephine appears after a long separation and begs Juliet to help out with a far more dangerous deception, Juliet lets herself be convinced to take her cousin's place--in society, and in an unhappy marriage--just for a few days. Then Josephine disappears, leaving Juliet to deal with Savannah's upper class, a house full of servants who strongly disliked Josephine, and a husband who is not at all as unpleasant as Josephine had implied.
I found Jane Aiken Hodge's books on Pollyanna's Booklist, the reading forum linked to Robin McKinley's blog. After reading two of these slightly-historical novels, I have to say I find the plots highly improbable and the characters overly melodramatic, but despite that, the books are charming in an old-fashioned way, and just ridiculous enough to be amusing. I mean, really, who thinks they can get away with impersonating someone's wife?

[Robert Fontenot · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this in a bulk lot of gothics but there isn't really much gothic about it. There isn't even really a lot of suspense or romance. The story mainly revolves on identical cousins repeatedly switching places so that one of them can try to free Napoleon. Both parts of the plan are fairly stupid. The author tries to neutralize the antebellum south setting by having the love interest be the sort of white man who has freed all his slaves and prefers to pay them a wage and give them free time but none of that undoes the quietly racist depictions of the black characters. Overall, though, the books biggest sin is that it's just plain dull.

[Sheela Word · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I actually read the American Kindle edition of this book, titled "All for Love." It was enjoyable escapist fiction, with an interesting post-Civil War Southern American setting. It has a good twin/bad twin plot. The heroine is somehow an exact physical duplicate of her selfish, amoral married cousin. Of course, she is inexplicably loyal to this cousin, and of course she falls in love with the cousin's estranged husband, which results in much angst. But things work out, as they always do.

[Squeaky · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second Jane Aiken Hodge book in a row. This one moved a bit quicker than Maulever Hall, and was not as complex. The book is suspense, less Gothic than Maulever. Enjoyable in the content and dialogue. I like the way Ms. Hodge writes, reminds me of Jane Austen. I actually laugh outloud at some things. This is a CLEAN book, no swearing, etc. Good for tween/teen and adult that will appreciate good dialogue.

[Good Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humorous book about french cousins Juliet and Josephine who trade places so Josephine can go off and rescue Napoleon from Elba. Complicated by the fact that Josephine is married to a wealthy plantation owner, who she no longer has relations with, but Juliet falls for. It is funny to see the confused reactions people have when the cousins switch back and forth!

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

The exciting tory of Juliet, who takes her cousin's place as wife to Hyde Purchiss, when Josephine tries to rescue Napoleon. Great story, well-written with lots of excitement, and a most satisfying conclusion. I enjoyed it even more on re-reading.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book before as Savannah Purchase and gave it two stars. I don't know why. I read it again (Jan 2015) under the title All for Love and really liked it and gave it four stars. Charming, clever and the history and locale were well done and interesting.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, light read about two cousins who look identical enough to switch places. Juliet helps her cousin out and ends up falling for her husband, or course. Very convenient resolution, but I found it entertaining and fun.

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much fun - masquerading as her cousin, the main character falls in love with her cousin's husband. Set in early 19th century Savannah.

[Shauna/Doorways · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Georgette Heyer-esqe, but set her in the States pre-Civil War. I really liked the plot and characterizations!