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The Path of a Star

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This is a novel about how the British colonizers of late Victoria in Calcutta fall in love with the wrong people. Hilda Howe is a travel-loving actress clearly on her way to the top of her profession before she meets Stephen Arnold, a Catholic priest.

209 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1898

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About the author

Sara Jeannette Duncan

106 books6 followers
Canadian born author and journalist.

After her marriage to Everard Charles Cotes she spent most of her time between England & India.
Duncan had been treated for tuberculosis in 1900, spending the summer out of doors in the fresh air of Simla, as chronicled in On the Other Side of the Latch (1901), published in the United States and Canada as The Crow's Nest. Duncan died of chronic lung disease on 22 July 1922 at Ashtead, Surrey, whence she and her husband had moved in 1921.

In 2016, she was named a National Historic Person on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.

information extracted from Wikipedia
a.k.a.:
Mrs. Everard Cotes
Sara Everard Cotes
Sara Jeannette Duncan Cotes


This author also writes under the pseudonym Mrs Everard Cotes.

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Profile Image for Perry Whitford.
1,956 reviews75 followers
September 22, 2015
An unusually intelligent and perceptive romance featuring various late-Victorian British colonialists in Calcutta falling in love with the wrong people.

Hilda Howe is a travelling actress clearly on the way to the top of her profession before she meets Stephen Arnold, a Catholic priest. Alecia Livingstone, her friend and 'pupil in the arts of life', loves the handsome Duff Lindsey, but he falls for Captain of the Salvation Army, a pious zealot for the cause.

The subtle ironies of the characters' speech and behaviour, the complete lack of emotional cliche or platitude and, of course, the setting, are not too dissimilar to E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. Forster met Duncan once and considered her “clever and odd".

Her heroine, Hilda Howe, is certainly a clever lady, and she certainly makes an odd choice on her path to becoming a star. The ending was a little abrupt, but it was the perfect way in which to crystalise the author's ideas about duty, love and vocational callings both high and low.

A surprising little gem of a novel by a writer I had never before heard of.
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