SUGAR HOUSE (Virago Modern Classics)

The year is 1920. Clara Batchelor is an actress touring with a repertory company. Now of age, she has forgotten the benevolent tyranny with which her Catholic parents treated her relationship with actor Stephen Tye. Yet when Stephen betrays her, Clara marries Archie, the fiancé she discarded four years earlier. A friendship but not a love match, this marriage proves a desperate attempt by Clara to rekindle the safety of childhood. Neither party is a child, however, and their dream sugar house soon begins to dissolve as their fragile marriage proves hopeless.