My Pride, My Folly

by Suzanne Butler

The peak of the sailing ship era is the setting for the story of Kirstina Brandt whose practical caution hides a gambler's heart. For she stakes her dowery to blot out the shame of her illegitimate birth on marriage with a countryman in Boston and learns on the voyage from Denmark that it is Michael Shea who holds her heart. It is him that she marries, her dowery forfeited, and news of his death at sea sends her wandering to Canada with his young son. The great fire in Montreal brings marriage to James and run down Prospect for a home where Margaret, James' sister, and his gently mad mother, hinder her hopes of progress. Her determination to provide for Rudi and James' little son opens up ways to bring the place into production so that when Michael, seeking her, appears she flings him off and continues her way. Margaret learns of the bigamy, poisons James, both in mind and body, and, with his death, and her threats to Kirstina to no avail, suicides insanely, leaving Michael and Kirstina and the children to a secure future. A woman's novel of a woman's life in which adversity and antagonism are vanquished -- at a price -- and fate resolves a self-made bondage, this deals with its period and its regions in unassuming fashion. (Kirkus Review)

Genres: Fiction

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

Reviews

[Kat]

Lovely. Didn't end the way I thought it would.

[Rose]

OK, I got this book in a free bin at a bookstore. I don't know if I really wanted to read it, I think I was going to craft with it? Anyway, I read a few pages here and there while I was in between other books I was more serious about. But then I had no other book and I continued to read. I almost threw it out after the SA (yes, btw there's a few instances of SA here).

I don't know if it is really a romance or a happy ending, it kind of had a surprise ending I wasn't expecting for the genre. I hated both Michael Shae and James Collinsworth as leading men, I rooted for neither and wanted Kirstina to end up as an older, independent woman, but I did see growth in all three at the end, enough to temper my dislike for the men and be fine with the ending.

Kirstina, the MC, has a personality based off survival and the fact she was never loved, so some readers may think her likeability isn't strong, but actually it rather fits for who she is and how she was raised, so the author did that well. She's very proud and guarded as a result. I loved the irony of the book, and if you read carefully, the book is drenched in irony from beginning to end.

I also liked the historical aspects. The author did a nice job with that.

Overall, I recommend. It's a blast from the past. I really wish there was a sequel, but seeing this was written in 1952, if one hasn't happened yet, it won't. *Sigh* The book was a wild ride and I believe the author looks so smug in her photo because she's waiting for us all readers to dismiss the book, then get really into it. She knew, she knew, lol.

[Cindy Black]

Michael Shea was mate on his uncle's ship, the Kronborg, when it put in at the Danish port of Aarhus. The time_about one hundred years ago. Kirstina Brandt came aboard for the long voyage to Boston, and to Aage Nordrupp, her prospective husband. Kirstina was a tall, strong, lovely girl of sixteen, and she wore her hair in thick golden braids reaching almost to her knees. And the moment Michael saw her "he began to laugh deep inside him for the joy of knowing that he had found something that he wanted, and the he meant to get." Source: Dust jacket. www.blacksbookshop.com

[Patricia Cochrane]

Interesting historically and nice to have a mostly Canadian setting

[Anne]

Didn't like it too much. Hated the "romantic" relationships and I didn't find the heroine to be that engaging. I wished it focused more on her different aspects in her life before her second marriage because those seem like they would have been more interesting stories.