Colony by Anne Rivers Siddons

Title: Colony
Author: Anne Rivers Siddons
ISBN: 9780061099700
Publisher: HarperTorch/1993
Pages: 640

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Book Blurb:
When Maude Chambliss first arrives at Retreat, the seasonal home of her husband's aristocratic family, she is a nineteen-year-old bride fresh from South Carolina's Low Country. Among the patrician men and women who reside in the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an outsider. She, as well as everyone else, is certain she will never fit in. And of course, she doesn't...at first.

But over the many summers she spends there, Maude comes to cherish life in the colony, as she does the people who share it with her. There is her husband Peter, consumed with a darkness of spirit; her adored but dangerously fragile children; her domineering mother-in-law, who teaches her that it is the women who posses the strength to keep the colony intact; and Maine native Micah Willis, who is ultimately Maude's truest friend.

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My views:

Colony spans 70 years and we see it with the eyes of Maude. When she arrives in Retreat, Maine, her mother-in-law doesn't accept her at all. Although her husband loves her, but he is a weak man who goes out to sail whenever the going gets tough. Amy Potter becomes her best friend but her husband is a lecherous man.

Peter is strangly distant of his own two children, who turn out to be somewhat sick. Over the years, Maude, with the help of her mother-in-law develops a strength of character, and is able to ndure anything, which includes sending one of her children to a sanitorium, and also a death of a grand child.

It all comes to a head when, Elizabeth, Amy Potters' daughter returns. She had almost been banished. Peter is strangly protective of her and Maude can't understand why. Maude finds an ally in Micah Willis, whose strength helps her to cope. Her deepening affection for him also shakes her out of her long-hidden feelings.

Although the book kind of drags at places, I still found the prose very poetic and that made me go one, not to forrget Maude's determination. Before this I had read King's Oak and liked it too. I will definitely check out more of Siddons novels.