Somewhere Lies the Moon

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The Barnes & Noble Review
Author Kathryn Lynn Davis introduced readers to the fascinating legend of the Rose women with TOO DEEP FOR TEARS and ALL WE HOLD DEAR, the first two books in a captivating trilogy that explores the triumphs and tragedies of several generations of women who all share a common bond. Now comes Somewhere Lies the Moon, the third installment in this intriguing family saga. As Davis takes readers along on this final leg of an exciting and sometimes heartbreaking journey, she brings to vivid life the mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends whose lives and destinies are all tied to the Scottish Highlands sanctuary, Glen Affric.

Charles Kittridge, an English diplomat with a wandering eye and lifestyle, fathers three very different daughters by three different women in three different countries. The eldest, Ailsa Rose, lives a life filled with music, magic, and passion amid the Scottish Highlands until her idealism is soundly and cruelly crushed. Li-An, the youngest daughter, bears the Chinese features of her mother and the startling blue eyes of her father, making her an outcast in society. Born in China during a time of violence and political unrest, Li-An suffers a multitude of tragedies that will leave an indelible mark on her life. Finally there is Genevra, a fair English Rose born and raised in the exotic and oppressive atmosphere of India, where she learns that the land and the people she loves will come to betray her.

Ailsa, Li-an, and Genevra are drawn together by a mystical connection they all share — as if each is a part of one bigger voice — and by thedeathbedsummons of their father. When Ailsa's mother, Mairi, opens her heart and her home to all three young women, their bond becomes one that cannot only withstand any assault but also provide a source of strength and sustenance to each of them. It's a strength all three will need and call upon when the trials and tribulations of life try to knock them down.

Somewhere Lies the Moon picks up the previous stories of Li-An and Genevra and brings them some resolution. Li-An struggles to find a way to heal old wounds and recover from the powerful grief that has seized her since the assassination of her beloved husband. But before she can search for the happiness and contentment she so desires, she must first travel a path of self-discovery marred by potholes of heartache, prejudice, and self-doubt. Genevra must deal with the very real dangers of the volatile environment she lives in and the imagined threats brought about by her own insecurities. Somewhere Lies the Moon also introduces Ailsa's granddaughter, Ena Rose, a young woman with a penchant for healing and a magical touch when it comes to creatures of the wild. When Ena reaches the brink of womanhood she finds herself struggling to meet the challenges imposed on her body, mind, and heart. But first she must search for a painful truth amid a tangle of lies, grudges, and betrayals.

Davis's prose is lyrical and evocative, and she weaves a vibrant and almost palpable thread of sensory detail throughout her work, bringing the people and places alive in a smorgasbord of smells, sights, sounds, and touches. From the heather-strewn hills of the Scottish Highlands to the exotic, spice-laden air of an Indian village, Davis brings home the importance of place in all our lives, deftly showing how it influences and shapes her characters. Somewhere Lies the Moon brings bittersweet closure to the overlapping generations of Rose women, letting us visit these remarkable women one last time and share in their passions, desires, and heartaches.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Like the Scottish Highlands glen where the heart of her new historical romance beats, Davis's prose is sometimes vibrant and alluring, sometimes impenetrable as gorse--especially for a reader new to her ongoing saga of the Rose clan (Too Deep for Tears). Despite the awkward premise that a contemporary young woman is reliving the tangled events of her 19th century ancestors, the novel will reward persistent readers. Mairi Rose Kittredge, the matriarch of Glen Affric, has embraced as daughters the love-children of her dead husband, Charles Kittredge, a British diplomat who had fathered Lian in China and Genevra in India, as well as Ailsa with Mairi in Scotland. The three half-sisters, who first meet as young women at the time of their father's death, remain empathically connected until dream-summoned back to the Glen, 17 years later, where Mari is on her deathbed. Their lives are described at exhausting length, and husbands and lovers and sons never quite completely claim the women's souls. Indeed, the most intriguing intimacies in the book are between women. An especially compelling triangle unites Ailsa, her pubescent daughter, Ena, and Jenny Fraser, whose late husband, Ian, is Ena's father. Though the betrayal is painful, childhood best friends Jenny and Ailsa eventually reconcile because of their shared love for Ena. As the novel gains momentum, it dispenses words of wisdom about mothers and daughters, women's power to forgive and the need of men to indulge in bloody, tragic heroics. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Another volume in Davis's wordy epic of women bonding in a Scottish glen. Davis (All We Hold Dear, 1995, etc.) structures her long reverie as a flashback. Eva Crawford, a musician and a student in Edinburgh, refuses to marry her lover, Rory, because she feels inexplicably insecure and disconnected. In several days, a kind of waking dream and the contents of an old trunk bring her back to her female ancestors: Mairi Rose Kittridge; her daughter, Ailsa; and Ailsa's two half-sisters, Genevra Townsend and Wan Lian, all three girls sired by Charles Kittridge, a British diplomat who got around. There's a section for each daughter: the first about Lian, who is forced to flee a sheltered life in China for a charming village in France, where an aristocrat artist teaches her that life need not be a vale of tears; another section about Genevra, a painter who is brought up in India and, while her soldier husband is away, nurses an estranged friend back to health, discovering her own spiritual strength; and Ailsa, who has returned to the glen after the death of her British husband and who is bringing up her extraordinary daughter, Ena, in her mother Mairi's dirt-floored croft. Ailsa is also mending fences with her former childhood friend Jenny, with whose husband Ailsa conceived Ena. And Ena, a precocious child who speaks like a self-help manual with a Scottish burr and tends to wounded animals, is having a difficult time growing up. All the women in this Glen Estrogen (the guys are pretty much all off tending their crops) have magical intuitions and dreams that foretell the future. And their dreams lead them back to the glen just before Mairi's death to bring closure to everyone'sspiritual quest among the burns and the ferns and the heather and the gloamin'. Davis writes romances for those, d'ya ken, who like to read about hidden spirits, exchange long, sensitive hugs, and talk about their feelings endlessly.