The Winds of Love

by Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Vintage book

Genres: Romance, Fiction

227 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Novelist Agnes Sligh Turnbull was born in 1888 in New Alexandria, PA. After a dozen years as a short story writer, Turnbull wrote her first novel, The Rolling Years, published in 1936. In the 14 additional novels she wrote over the next 40-plus years, Turnbull built a thorough chronicle of the Scots who settled and farmed rural Westmoreland County. Turnbull died in 1982.

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was SO very disappointed in this book. I have absolutely loved every other book of hers that I've read, but this one had SO much wrong with it. Part of it may very well be the time setting of the novel. It takes place in 1976 and much of the action is centered around a high school and teenagers. I was a high school junior and senior in 1976 and so much of this book just rings wrong for me. The language was stilted and awkward, and the characters seemed really fake. The young mothers ALL stay home, wear hats and go to teas. In 1976 in the US!! One of the central storylines in the book is problems with high school kids: drinking, drugs and living together. Seriously, LIVING TOGETHER? And she's not using a euphemism for sex, because they talked about that pretty clearly, too. Nope - living together, setting up house with their allowances, the girls washing the boys laundry, etc. Was this really happening anywhere in the US in 1976? High school students???? I remember nothing like that and I went to a fairly big city school with 1000 kids in my graduating class. And how do they solve these problems and prevent the kids from engaging in sex, drugs and rock and roll?? Well first, the main character of the book has a talk with all the girls at school (yes, JUST the girls, because, after all during sex - "in her case, the inmost, holy, sacrosanct part of her body is invaded. There is deposited there something which, under certain circumstances, can become life itself" no kidding, DIRECT QUOTE from the (male) principal of the HS who is talking to a bunch of women of the community. Other solutions that work are a girls quilting club, square dances and group sings.

The entire book, and each of the storylines is so incredibly hackneyed. I haven't even mentioned the cheating husband of the main character (who, of course, comes back in the end), the decidedly odd relationship that she has with her brother and the totally inexplicable wealthy mental patient who wanders in and builds a brick wall and plants a garden for her before his son finds him and takes him back to his secure home???? It would be really hard to give a complete synopsis of this book without sounding a little crazy.

This was the first book of hers that I felt had an agenda and, though I liked the people (she really has a knack for creating truly likeable characters), I found them unrealistic.