Return in Kind

by Laura C. Stevenson

When Letty Hendrickson dies, she leaves an enormous bequest to Mather College - but to her husband Joel, she leaves 150 acres in Vermont that he didn't know she owned. Joel goes to Vermont to sell the property, and discovers not a ski-country investment but the Ward an old farm with a family graveyard and a house that is mysteriously clean and well-kept, in spite of having been empty since 1959. As Joel tries to solve the mystery of the bequest, he is assisted by three women. The first is Helena Woodhouse, who had a 45 year platonic friendship with Letty's guardian Nathaniel Brantford, the iconic president of Mather College from 1940 to 1977. The second is Charlotte (Charlie) Reynolds, a beautiful teenager whose eager research reveals the long-kept secrets of the Ward Place. And finally, first-hand understanding of the Vermont closed to outsiders is provided by Eleanor Randall Klimowski, a scholar who has been fired from her teaching job because of her increasing deafness , and who is now cleaning houses to support herself. What emerges is a tale of romance, misplaced pride, and unendurable sorrow - and Joel's realization that the bequest was a twisted but genuine act of love.

264 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2010

About the author

Laura C. Stevenson is the award-winning author of four novels for young adults and three for adults, as well as the author of a monograph on Elizabethan literature and society, several articles on the Golden Age of Children’s Literature, and three essays on deafness. She was trained as a historian at the University of Michigan and Yale University, and she taught writing and humanities at Marlboro College from 1986 to 2013. She lives in her family’s old summer house in Vermont.

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you enjoy the genres of "small college town" and "introspective academic people" then you'll probably like this book. At the moment, I'm more than a little tired of these genres, with their hidden secrets, buried grudges, and quasi-academic pontifications. So, although this book is written decently, it was not the book for me.