Elswyth Thane wrote a timeless tale of the human experience and how it is affected by war and made bearable by love. With skilled writing and human insight she made those moments come alive and ring true for every generation from the 1700s to the 1940s! I stumbled on "Dawns Early Light" at the local library when I was in my 20s and traveled between three libraries to find the other five books in successive order. I'm rereading them now in my mid-50s and enjoying them more than when I read them at 30 and 40. Im still traveling to three libraries to ferret them out. How delighted I am to finally find a source where I can put together my own set. I purchased "Dawns Early Light" during a visit to Williamsburg in 1978 and it remains one of my most cherished books. I am still enthralled with Thayne's descriptions of Marion's (the Swamp Fox) camp and the battles of Camden and the Pine Barrens. These novels have done more to foster my life-long love of American history than any other books I've ever read.

Well, not quite, perhaps. A couple of generations get skipped (as do several wars) between the first and second books in this series, but "Yankee Stranger" is well worth the wait. The presence of Tibby Day, now approaching 100, gives the meandering trail between books one and two a context and much-needed continuity -- and the overlap of the generations which this scenario demonstrates has always fascinated me in my own life. As in book one, Thane's characters grip you firmly and draw you unresisting into the tangle of their lives, battered by war and division, anchored by family affection and made luminous by love and passion: Eden, the Titian beauty pulled in different directions by love and loyalty; Cabot, product of an embittered father who learns to love and trust despite the cataclysm of war; Susannah and Sedgwick, the star-crossed lovers who must face the future without each other; and most joyously, Tibby Day, a matriarch in wisdom, a "character" in the idiomatic sense, and the glue that binds the family and the book together. As usual, the history in this book is exact and irreproachable, the historical characters become human, and the atmosphere is tangible and touchable. Libby Prison is juxtaposed against fashionable Willard's Hotel; war-ravaged Richmond underlines in blood-red the quaint and restful pastels of ante-bellum Williamsburg; military camps stand vivid against civilized family holidays and the gentle spirit of Tibby Day presides over all. Courage and dedication, sacrifice and humor, the entire spectrum of human emotion emerges in this book. The superficial reader will be offended, as in Thane's other books, at the casually racist undertones, but the historically aware will rightly attribute them not only to the age in which the story takes place, but the era in which the author is writing. With history books firmly in hand and love stories firmly in mind, Thane once more slips us back through time into a memorable past -- and makes us eager to move forward to the next book in the series!

I first read the Women of Williamsburg series as a young teenager. They were not only great reading and wonderful stories, but lots of history mixed in. All of the books are great of course, but this one is one of my favorite that I sem to go back to & read again every couple of years. I am excited to finally find a matching set of the series.Most of the women in my family have read these books- my grandmother, who in turn got my mother to read, who in turn got me to read. I cannot wait until my daughter is old enough to read & enjoy them as well.

This is another example of Elswyth Thane's magnificent writing skill! Elswyth Thane has the great talent of combining historical facts and figures with fictitious and romantic plots without overdosing in either element.
In Ever AFter, the story opens on Susannah, now aged and spinsterish but still writing as fervently as ever. On Eden, now married to journalist Cabot Murray and the mother of three grown children. Bracken, her eldest, is a somewhat resigned young man who shows promise in the feild of journalism. His sister, Virginia, is a blossoming and flirtatious southern belle who hooks nearly every man who looks at her. And Fitz, the son of Sedgwick and Melicent Sprague, Fitz's only companions it seems are his piano and Sue. He is the outcast of the family, the one oddity that no one understands except Sue.
As Fitz leaves the shelter of Williamsburg and his songwriting, he takes a job with Cabot's paper in New York and there meets Gwen, an actress who will change his life's course forever. Meanwhile, Sue, Bracken and Virginia set out for England for the Jubilee celebration. There they encounter Sir Gration Forbes-Carpenter, who is a war veteran from the war in Africa. This leaves Sue with a choice that will plague her conscious forever; her spontaneous friendship with Sir Gration or her deep and forbidden love for Sedgwick...
However, Sue is not the only one who finds love in England. Bracken, still hurt from his not-quite-finished divorce with Lizl Olezei, finds Dinah Campion. Immediately touched by her young and sweet innocence, Bracken is forced to conceal his love for her until she is of age to marry.
Matters become more complicated as the steadily growing conflict between Spain and Cuba erupts into war. Fitz and Bracken are forced to go to Cuba as war correspondents and must leave their newfound loves behind.
Take my advice if you have already read Dawn's Early Light and Yankee Stranger and read this book. You won't be disappointed.

For many years my favorite of the Williamsburg Novels (I even named my only son after the main character!) "Ever After" is a delectible evocation of late Victorian life in America and England. One of the blessed qualities of the writing of Elswyth Thane is that she can take each character of each generation of her families and make them vivid, alive, humanly recognizable, and -- most amazing feat of all -- DIFFERENT! Dinah Campion is no more Tibby Mawes than Bracken Murray is St. John Sprague, and all Thane's heroines, from Tibby to Eden to Virginia and beyond have their own decidedly varied personalities. Less war-oriented than her first two novels, "Ever After" tells the story of loves delayed (as loves and lives always are) by the interruption of violence into well-ordered lives. With her usual deft pen Thane not only reconstructs turn-of-the-century Williamsburg for us, but turns her talents to late 19th century New York and England as well. More than any other of her books, I think, this one depicts exquisitely the settings where her characters live and function: the fascinating city that was New York in the Gay 90s -- early vaudeville with its colorful characters, fashionable Park Avenue where the very rich dressed and partied and lived in isolated splendor, the seamier side of existence where vices of every kind could make the frightened sister of a tawdry vaudeville suicide expect to have to pay back the men who rescue her in the "usual" way. And Thane's beloved England sparkles through her eyes, not only in its upper-class, fox-hunting, tweed-wearing, manifiestations, but in the lonely lives led by the ignored and repressed offspring of the rich and elite. Through Thane's skill as a story-teller and the window she seems to possess into the human soul, what might be a completely unbelievable tale of love at first sight becomes an entirely comprehensible exercise in passion and self-restraint. Music fills this book, literally and figuratively, and the Spanish-American War, when it erupts into these sophisticated and civilized pages, takes us away from that music only momentarily. The disputes and disagreements of war are not the main conflicts in this novel; love postponed, love seemingly impossible, love triumphant are the themes, and Thane lifts us out of ourselves and into the hearts of her characters with all the skill of a conjuror. A honey of a book, and a dilly of a portrait!

I keep coming back to read this book, or pick it up when I want to be cheered up or entertained.

There are basically two main storylines, somewhat interwoven although they take place in New York and England (and also together in Cuba).

I am not that interested in the details of war, but to my surprise I actually found much of the war part ( there isn't a whole lot ) interesting.

The storyline concerns an extended family and focuses on Bracken Murray, his sister Virginia, and their cousin Fitz. This being a E. Thane book, their are other enchaning minor characters whose stories are actually told! =)

Bracken's wife has left him for someone who had more money and he is the son of a famous newspaper owner and is funny and wonderful and charming and great. His sister is beautiful and merry and very alive and loveable. Fitz is the odd duck who composes and is charming with his southern drawl. The three of them fall in love (with other charming people), with different barriers to their happiness.

Dinah is a darling. Gwen was sweet. Enough said. I loved Dinah!

The writing style is wonderful, there are few authors who can do such an entertaining job. Read it. It helps somewhat if you have read Yankee Stranger (2nd in the series), but a family tree makes it an inconvenience instead of a barrier. Read it and be prepared for a marvelous time.

I read this book in the 60's, and loved it deeply then. It has held up well. I'd be hard pressed to say whether I like this book or _Dawn's Early Light_ (the first story in the series) best. It is probably best appreciated after reading the first book in the series. They form the bookends of a wonderful series about several intertwined families on both sides of the Atlantic from the American Revolution through World War II. The editions I read as a kid had family trees on the endpapers, and they were a great help.
_Homing_ recounts the story of Mab, a young girl, and her extended family, through the beginning of WW II. Although I am not a historian, I have not ever encountered a historical event in one of Ms. Thane's books that was contradicted by any history I have read. She makes history immediate and real by showing how characters you care about are affected by historical events. The history is background to the story; although it contributes significantly to the plot, I never felt I was being lectured. Characterizations ring true; I came to care deeply about the people in the story. There are ways in which this book, and the whole series, remind me of the books of Rosamunde Pilcher - the are populated by people I'd like to meet, coping with their lives.

The last of the Williamsburg Series, Homing brings you full circle back to the past. The best way to read this book is after you have read the others, beginning with "Dawn's Early Light". I first read them when I was a teenager and I still read them every couple of years. The characters are like family or maybe the way we would like family to be.

This is the conclusion to the Williamsburg Novels that begins with Dawn's Early Light. The characters continue to ring true and the historical view of both England and the US during the early days of WWII is great. The story truly comes full circle and makes you want to read them all again.

It has been twenty years since I first read Riders of the Wind and I can still thrill to the love story wrapped up in a marvelous adventure. Shere Shan has been a magic word for me standing for guts, determination and belief in something more than the ordinary. A heroine you can identify with and a hero worth any sacrifice. Can you tell I loved it?

I think her fans would agree that Thane's story telling seems always marked by a certain timelessness. In my opinion, this book, perhaps more than all her others, captures that quality. To start with, it is the Indiana Jones of its time - in short, a truly great adventure. And, as with many female characters in the Williamsburg novels, this heroine's feelings and thoughts are written so poignantly that the reader instantly identifies with her, regardless of era and culture. And, as always, Thane manages to weave an amazing love story into the story's fabric, along with everything else. It really is a great novel - one of my favorites. Read it -you won't be disappointed!

I first stumbled over Dawn's Early Light in my high school library in the early '80s. Nobody had read the book out in nearly 10 years, and I took it out because I felt sorry for it. Finding the rest of the series wasn't as easy, but it was worth the effort. Elswyth Thane had a wonderful sense of time and place, and her research into the period is so good that you just follow along an believe what's happening. The characters in her novels are real, and usually quite personable, and stay with you after you finish the book -- a good thing in any novel.

The first of Thane's "Williamsburg Novels" and the first I ever read, "Dawn's Early Light" is a master construction of plot, personalities, history and eloquent atmosphere. The main fictional characters interact casually and naturally with their famous (and factual) neighbors, and the candlelit or dusty summer day ambience rings true and compelling. Thane's research is not only above reproach, but she details battle scenes, geographical locations, actual historical characters, political and ideological viewpoints and dialogue so comprehensively that reading her novels is akin to dreaming your way (very vividly) back in time. Naturally the reader in 2001 must overlook or take in context Ms. Thane's inevitable early 20th century biases, but this is not difficult to any person with historical perspective and cultural awareness. Ms. Thane's main fictional characters -- Julian Day, the uncomfortable Tory newcomer in a hotbed of rebels; Tabitha Mawes, the child of disgrace and poverty who adores the new young schoolmaster with a very unchildlike love; St. John Sprague the firebrand patriot whose friendship with Julian brings him a rival in love as well as at long last a comrade in arms, and so many more -- are brought to life to the point where visiting Williamsburg one almost expects to bump into them in Francis Street. But perhaps Thane's greatest accomplishment is to have taken a host of Founding Fathers such as Washington, Lafayette, Jefferson, Francis Marion, George Wythe and others out of the category of glorified but wooden history book images and turned them into believably human presences. An excellent story, characters of poignant clarity, set into the backdrop of the American Revolution. An unbeatable book.

I first read Dawn's Early Light and the other novels in the Williamsburg series 40 or 45 years ago, when we took them out of the library over and over again and read and reread them until I still could probably reconstruct large chunks of them verbatim if I were stuck on a desert island. The characterizations are so good that even years after my last rereading I can keep the complex family trees straight without effort. The well researched settings are so well done that even today they form the basis for a lot of my general knowledge of American (and later English) history in the periods they cover. The story pulls you right in, the characters are realistic, lovable, and intelligent, the dialogue is witty, the writing excellent--the Days, Spragues, and in the later books the Campions have always felt like members of my own family. What could be a better indicator of a great read? I'm glad to have thought of looking for them on amazon and am pleased but not surprised to find they're still in print.

While each of Ms Thane's books can be read and enjoyed individually, I think they are best appreciated if one reads them in order: "Dawn's Early Light," "Yankee Stranger," "Ever After," "The Light Heart," "Kissing Kin," "This was Tomorrow," and "Homing." This takes the Day-Sprague clan from the Revolutionary War well into the WWII era.

When Phoebe Sprague discovers that love may not mean the bland affection evoked by dependable, familiar, unexciting Miles Day, but rather the effervescent, shameless, delirious passion inspired by the revelation that is Oliver Campion, life enters a maze she never imagined. Endlessly, hopelessly separated by previous entanglements, Phoebe and Oliver weave in and out of each other's lives through peace and into war, touching but never holding in an agony of love denied. Meanwhile Rosalind Norton-Leigh, beautiful, light-hearted and naive, learns what it means to commit her life without love to a man who is a stranger in perspective, in background, and in temperament. These two main stories hang upon the framework provided by the years between the death of Victoria and the start of the First World War. But be forewarned: glorious and enthralling as the stories are, in this as in the final books of this series Ms. Thane's dislike for and contempt of what she perceives to be the "German Character" glare like a discord in a lovely symphony. One must remember that Thane spent all her summers in England between the World Wars, and that these novels were written just before and during the Second, so that her blatant anti-German prejudice becomes at least understandable -- but her verbal decimation of Germans as a nationality and as a culture can be as difficult to take as the casual racism of her earlier novels. Read this book for its virtues -- her description of the sinking of the Lusitania, London during the zeppelin raids, life in a German Schloss before the war, England in Thane's favorite elite trappings. Read it, if for no other reason, than for the embraceable, eye-popping and purely-a-joy character that is long lost cousin Sally Sprague. And read it most of all for the glorious human romances that adorn this scaffolding. If nothing else, this book will make you fall in love all over again with the wild, pulse-pounding idea of being once more (but maybe for the only time) truly in love.

I read this book over 25 years ago and loved it. The enduring love story of shy, young Phoebe and strong, handsome soldier Oliver (set in the War years of the early 1900s) has remained strong in my memory all these years.

No other book compares! My favorite since I first read it when I was 13. Every time I read it my heart aches for Hilary and Sabrina's misfortune. Miss Thane weaves a rather believable ghost love story that you will want to read over and over again!!

Agreeing with all the other reviewers, this is one of the best romantic stories I have ever read, as well as a stunning and beautifully handled novel on the afterlife. Along with the film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Tryst is one of the wonderful stories about love that truly meant something, not like what we read about or see in films lately. The book is emotionally moving, but also intelligent, being a contrast to a lot of the nonsense being written these days. This is a hopeful story as well as a tragic one, and it has haunted me for nearly 30 years. I was ecstatic to discover it was in print!

I read this book when I was in high school, remembered it deeply, clearly, and have hunted for a copy of it for nearly two decades. It's a very sweet love story, with all the undercurrents and tensions of complex human lives. I agree with the reviewer that said that the situation of the out-of-sync lovers is both memorable and so deftly resolved.

I loved this book enough to search it out after decades of remembering it.

Washington's Lady is a fictionalized account of the life of Martha Washington. In it, Thane has woven a tale around what is known of the first President and his devoted wife. It is well-researched and sympathetic to an historic figure about whom so little is actually known.

There are moments when the prose is almost lyrical. For instance, when the diminutive Martha (barely 5 feet tall) is surrounded by army officers who tower over her in their uniforms and swords at their sides. And then, when she tells of Washington's first visit to Mt. Vernon after many years at war. He arrives in the middle of the night, everyone is asleep, and he has to knock at his own door. When he enters and sees Martha at the top of the stairs he bounds up the steps to her. That is a scene we can only hope actually happened.

This is a jewel of a story for anyone interested in early American history and who don't mind a little speculation into the lives of those who played such prominent roles. It's a love story without being sappy.

After a strong first chapter, readers who have become accustomed to the strong female protagonists in Thane's Williamsburg series will slowly turn green at the antics of talented nitwit Elizabeth Dare and her beloved accordian-playing ornithologist. To today's readers, the reasons why one or the other must abandon a successful career in order to be happily married will seem obscure, especially given that neither Thane nor her own ornithologist husband did so. Despite some compelling scenes, it is a peculiar and outdated book with a contrived ending.

I enjoyed it, but somehow it didn't ring true. Elizabeth was ridiculously willing to sacrifice her marriage--repeatedly! And her background as a poor child seemed tacked on, as if Thane wanted to make her more sympathetic. Still, it was a good, old-fashioned read.

A beautiful and talented actress discovers an average and intelligient science professor trespassing on her property. They become friends and eventually get married. His job takes them to South America and Elizabeth must adjust to a new way of life. They are attacked while they are there and barely survive. After she has recovered Elizabeth leaves her husband to make a movie. He tracks her down, and eventually true love wins out. A wonderful detailed true to life book.

Camilla and Calvert (well, Calvert isn't around much) are some of Thane's weakest characters in this series. It's a shame that Camilla, who seems pallid and passive, is the focal point of the book. The secondary story is equally frustrating, with characters who are far from compelling. Still, Thane sets up her historical setting well, and seems to do another good job of creating characters who are of their time rather than hers.

I discovered this book largely because the staircase in the local public library deposits browsers in the T section of fiction, and it appealed to me as a dark, yet not hopelessly grim, novel of WWI. As a Williamsburg novel, _Kissing Kin_ provides a good deal of exposition needed to get from _The Light Heart_ to _This Was Tomorrow_, but it is certainly the darkest of the series, and the happy endings seem a tad contrived. Our heroine, Camilla, epitomizes the "lost generation," as her idealistic efforts to help with WWI ultimately leave her rootless and drifting until the darkening cloud of Nazi Germany revives her sense of purpose.