No greater love

by Julie Ellis

Strong and consistently absorbing, this romance by a master of the genre ( A Daughter's Promise ) seizes the reader's interest immediately. Harry Newhouse and Katie Freeman marry as idealistic teenagers in 1923 and move from New York City's Lower East Side to a small farm in Texas. Harry, shrewd and headstrong, begins to make a fortune in the stock market; although Katie is uneasy at spending their money freely, the couple enjoys a gilded lifestyle, plying their two children, Leo and Joanne, with luxuries. Misfortunes begin when Harry loses everything in the crash of '29; a family tragedy then leads to Harry and Katie's divorce and precipitates permanent estrangement from their daughter. Harry turns to a new career in the grain business and enters an unsatisfactory marriage with a young, calculating woman while Katie, with a string of enterprises, becomes one of the country's most successful entrepreneurs. Ellis's prodigious story-telling skills overcome some contrived turns in the plot to deliver both vivid settings and characters to care about.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Genres: Fiction

480 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

From the inside cover of the Kappa Books edition of Eden:

Julie Ellis was born in Columbus, Georgia. She moved to New York at age 16 with her parents, after her high school graduation. Julie studied drama, and was part of the mid-'50s Off-Broadway scene as actress/playwright/co-producer. Seven of her plays were produced Off-Broadway and presented on the summer hotel/bungalow colony circuits. She wrote 76 sides of children's records (hitting BILLBOARD'S Bestseller List). Her first paperback novel was published in 1960 and between 1960 and 1974 she wrote 143 contemporary, gothic, romantic suspense novels and 3 non-fiction titles that were published by major paperback houses.

Julie has written one hardcover/softcover bestseller per year (a number of early paperback originals now being re-published in hardcover in the United Kingdom). Ellis is published in thirteen countries. A favorite among library readers across the country, Julie regularly appears on LIBRARY JOURNAL'S "Pre-publication Bestseller Lists." In 1993 she made the United Kingdom's Registrar of Public Lending Rights List of the most-read authors in the United Kingdom Library System (minimum of 300,000 loans per author).

A single mother since 1972 (first separated, then widowed), Julie considers her major productions her daughter Susan and her son Richard. Julie is a passionate environmentalist whose convictions appear regularly in her novels (the devastation of our Northwest forests in LOYALTIES, the unnecessary deaths caused by the tobacco industry in LASTING TREASURES, gun control in COMMITMENT). Julie is a vegetarian with occasional lapses due to social circumstances. She alternates between her Manhattan apartment and beach house in Montauk.

Reviews

[Adrianna]

This book, I was just okay on. It was really interesting because it was not your typical romance...it took place over 50 years in Texas and includes various historical events...way too much at times, but okay. There are also a lot of characters and changes over the years. The "main" romance is between Katie and Harry who live in the slums of New York and miraculously strike it rich in Texas. The book moves along very quickly and we see them gain, lose, and re-gain wealth, make friends, lose friends, start and lose businesses, and have 2 children. After the tragic death of their child in the middle of the book, Harry and Katie divorce very hastily with no real conversation (he literally just takes off and leaves) and Katie spoils her remaining child, Joanna. Joanna is extremely irritating, poorly developed and Katie bends over backwards, working herself to a bone, to support her lavish life style. Harry is similarity dickish, cutting off contact with Katie and never writing or sending money...instead he marries a petulant teenager, grossly coerces her into having another child, and semi-stalks Katie through newspapers and secretly visiting Dallas over the years. He justifies is workaholic lifestyle as trying to "help" his family out...really he's in it for the money. Katie, of course, never finds love and pines after greedy, immature Harry for years, never even contacting him to attend the funeral after their daughter dies, which seems unforgivable, but maybe just given how he basically abandoned her. The years pass quickly, and character development really falls off in the final quarter of the book. Joanna and her marriage to a gay man and are never explored; Joanna's complicated feelings of grief and resentment towards her parents are hinted at but never explored-instead she's just killed off; Jeff and Maura's relationship and his failed writing career is never explored; Katie's journalist grandchild is poorly developed. Harry and Katie are suddenly reunited 38 YEARS after their separation which is just lonely and sad. I wish Katie had at least found fulfilling love and re-married at some point, maybe re-marrying Harry in widowhood. Overall, I found it pretty absorbing, interesting. Those who are history buffs may love it. Maybe would have been better to have been split over several books.

[Dee]

I was enjoying the read, but somehow it became boring. When I reached the III part of the book, I lost all my interest. Emphasizing on the main characters' looking twenty years younger than they actually were, was very off putting too. I learned a great deal when it came to history of the World Wars though.

[Partridge Public]

Ellis, Julie

[Margaret]

I didn't enjoy this book - too slow.

[Laura Lee]

An enjoyable saga, tho it did go on and on.

[Nevine]

Wonderful story!! The author is a great writer :))