The Testimony

To Have and To Hold #1

by Laura London

A classic novel from acclaimed author Laura London, for fans of Julie Garwood, Jude Deveraux, Loretta Chase, Johanna Lindsey and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss.

For vibrant Christine Ludan, the six months apart from her husband has been a dark time. But now dynamic Jesse Ludan, Milwaukee's controversial reporter, is coming home.

Christine yearns for their lives to flow together once again, just as their bodies melt in passionate embrace. But she dares not speak of Jesse's painful experience...and he is reluctant to intrude into her gentle world. They are united by a thousand shared thoughts and feelings, yet sometimes they seem like strangers as they struggle to reaffirm the deeply felt joy that once bound them so intimately together.

Fall in love with the richly romantic, classic love stories of Laura London, author of The Windflower , as her beloved novels are released in ebook for the first time.

Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Romance, Historical Romance

159 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 1983

About the author

Laura London is the pen name for the husband and wife writing team Tom and Sharon Curtis. Married more than forty years, Tom and Sharon published ten historical and contemporary romance novels from 1976 to 1986, many of which have come to be regarded as classics in the genre. The daughter of a petroleum geologist father and historian and magazine editor mother, Sharon was raised overseas and lived in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Canary Islands, Turkey and Iran, and attended high school in London. As an adult, she worked in bookstore management. Tom attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison and has worked for a public television station as a writer and on-air reporter. He is currently employed as a semi truck driver for a chemical company and plays guitar with a Celtic band that includes a son on bodhran and a daughter on fiddle. Together they have played eighteen years of annual performances at the largest Irish musical festival in the world.

Reviews

[Aneca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robin James is a pseudonym for Sharon and Tom Curtis. My book has a very different cover (much more discreet) and the authors listed in the cover were indeed Tom and Sharon. Since I couldn’t find an image of that cover online In decided to use this older one.

I was curious about this book because I have read several by the authors but all historical. This one is a contemporary and I wanted to know how they would do in a different period.

It’s the story of Jesse Ludan, a journalist who refuses to reveal his sources for a story and so is sent to prison for 6 months. When the story starts his wife, Christine, is getting ready to receive him home again, she hasn’t seen him for 6 months because he always asked her not to visit him.

Jesse comes from a loving Hungarian family, now living in the US, who fought for freedom in their native country and know the value of civil rights and liberties. Christine, on the other hand, comes from a privileged background, a ballet teacher with a trust fund that has enabled her to pursue her goals.

I think the first problem with this story is that one never really feels why Jesse and Christine fell in love; we don’t have a glimpse of what happened in the past to help them create the strong connection they have now. That makes it harder to understand how, in the end, they seem to overcome the problem too easily.

Then the book deals with some interesting problems like civil rights, the journalist’s right to protect their sources and how far should he go to protect them. By giving Jesse a Hungarian background, it also touches on immigration and how their voyage to America represents their desire to live in a free, democratic country.

Although I find all this very interesting themes, I find that the book was too short, and the characters not well developed enough, to make for a successful story. Jesse is from the beginning a very damaged character by his experiences in prison but all the anger he is feeling, and showing, for being locked up is not as well explained as I would have liked.



Grade: 3/5

[Lillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read because Chels talked about it. I’ve never read a book like this. It’s a very intimate romance novel (but doesn’t have the usual formula?) about a husband and wife who have been unwillingly separated for six months. The book begins the night that they are reunited and follows them for a few weeks as they begin to heal.


I really enjoyed this book. It made my heart ache. I also just love reading books about two people who love each other trying to navigate a new situation. In some ways it reminded me of Family Happiness by Tolstoy.


My one complaint is that it was TOO clever. The characters were witty, but unnaturally so. I wish that had been toned down.

[Gloria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughtful exploration of the relationship turbulence between a married reporter who has just been released from prison after six months for refusing to name names to the authorities and the wife he left to fend for herself in his absence.

And when I say thoughtful, I mean pages and pages of thoughts. Interminable internal monologues broken by brief periods of awkward communication, especially during the first half of the book, made this move like a river of molasses. There was good stuff, but it was just so hard to wade through. As they began to share their feelings with each other in the second half of the book, it got more engaging and more emotional.

Worthy, but requires more patience than I wanted to muster.

[ANGELIA · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing about this book was the H's Hungarian family, how close they were, how much they had gone through in Hungary in 1956, and how happy and grateful they were to have made lives for themselves in America.

The rest of the story, about the H and h both having to adjust to his being in prison for six months didn't have all that much depth. He was arrested for being an ethical reporter who wouldn't give the names of the people present at a nuclear power plant protest that he was covering, where machinery was tampered with, to delay the start of construction.

The story starts when he gets home, and touches on what he went through in prison, how she adjusted without him, the effects confinement had on his personality and how she feared he was shutting her out. You also learn how they met and fell in love (a funny story that involves his brother, a famous dancer), how the difference in their social classes (his working class to her upper middle one) was a problem for them for a time, and about the h's ballet school, where she teaches different ages, including an adorable (and mischievous) class of four-year-old girls.

there were good things in the story, but it seemed like there wasn't enough depth to it. The H wasn't in prison that long, so the whole adjustment thing didn't have the impact that his being away a few years would have, and I think that would have made for a better story.

It's not bad, but I've read better.

[Reforming · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story of a reporter jailed for six months for refusing to give up information and his return to his wife. Not your typical romance. Great secondary characters.