The Way in the Dark

by Jean S. MacLeod

You can't go back! You can't go back! The train wheels repeated their message. yet after six years of comfortable living, an undeniable compulsion was drawing Janet back to the bleak, isolated Yorkshire farm. Back to Mark, whose young love she had rejected. Now she realized he was the only man she would ever love. But Mark had changed. Bitter and unforgiving, he was not interested in her own reasons for returning-- only that she was there to work.

Genres: Harlequin Romance

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Jean Sutherland MacLeod was born in 20 January 1908 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Allen and John MacLeod. Her father, who was a civil engineer, moved with jobs. Her education began at Bearsden Academy, continued in Swansea and ended in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She moved to North Yorkshire, England to marry with Lionel Walton on 1 January 1935, an electricity board executive, who died in 1995. They had a son, David Walton, who died two years before her. She passed away on 11 April 2011 at 103 years.

Jean S. MacLeod started writing stories for the magazine The People's Friend, before sold her first romance novel in 1936. She wrote contemporary romances, most of them were set in her native Scotland, or in exotic places like Spain or Caribbean, places that she normally visited for documented. From 1948 to 1965, she also published under the pseudonym of Catherine Airlie. She published her last novel in 1996, a year after her husband death. She was member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, where she met the mediatic writer Barbara Cartland, who was not too friendly.

Reviews

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Janet has been elderly Miss Pope's companion/nurse, and living with her in the Mediterranean, for the past six years. After the old woman dies, Janet decides to go back home, to the farm she used to live at in Yorkshire. She left six years ago, at nineteen, because she wanted more out of life than just working on a farm. Also, she hasn't heard from her family in quite a while. She arrives at her old home, Wildfell, and finds out that her stepmother, Harriet, has had a stroke recently and hasn't been well. (Janet was adopted when she was a year old by Harriet and Matthew Langdon.) Janet discovers she misses Wildfell and wants to stay and help out. She also meets up with Harriet's son, Mark, who now owns the farm since his father died. Mark and Janet were romantically involved six years ago but Janet rejected Mark's love when she told him love wasn't enough to keep her in such a lonely, isolated place. She's surprised at how harsh and bitter Mark has become---and finds out he has a four-year-old son, Jonathan. But where's Jonathan's mother? And is Jonathan really Mark's son?

I enjoyed this book, but it was slow at times. I also wished there was more romance in the book. The main couple weren't together as much as I would've liked them to be. And Mark was a moody hero. I did like how Janet really tried to help out when she returned home and she realized how much she loved and missed Wildfell and Mark. The story also had a bit of a mystery concerning Mark's "son" Jonathan, who was very cute. This was an okay older Harlequin Romance.