{"id":5049,"date":"2023-06-16T06:14:23","date_gmt":"2023-06-16T13:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5049"},"modified":"2023-06-16T06:14:23","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T13:14:23","slug":"anna-lee-huber-a-fatal-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/anna-lee-huber-a-fatal-illusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Lee Huber: A Fatal Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lady Darby\u00a0 #11<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Anna Lee Huber\u2019s most outstanding quality as a writer is her educated heart.\u00a0 The way she parses human relationships is nothing short of brilliant.\u00a0 In the latest Lady Darby outing, she and her husband, Sebastian Gage, are summoned to the bedside of his disagreeable father – Lord Gage has been shot as he was making his way home via coach.\u00a0 It\u2019s 1832 Yorkshire and travelling the highways could be dangerous – not only was Lord Gage shot (luckily in the leg) but one of his servants has been killed.\u00a0 Sebastian is suffering from a plethora of emotions, all expertly dissected by Huber.<\/p>\n

As Kiera and her family arrive at the surgeon\u2019s home where Lord Gage is recovering, their household \u2013 servants and baby Emma \u2013 find him much weakened and diminished.\u00a0 They are accompanied by their friend, Henry, recently discovered to be Sebastian\u2019s half-brother.\u00a0 Sebastian loves Henry but struggles with the infidelity that made him a reality, and Lord Gage is dismissive of him to the point of utter rudeness.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure why Henry puts up with it, frankly, other than loyalty to Sebastian and Kiera.<\/p>\n

As Lord Gage slowly recovers, Sebastian and Kiera begin to untangle motives, despite outright hostility from the townspeople.\u00a0 It appears that a band of highwaymen operating in a Robin Hood type fashion are known to the village, and are actually well liked by them, as the money they take is redistributed to the neediest.\u00a0 However, they have never before injured anyone, and it\u2019s this anomaly that enables Kiera and Sebastian to get a way into the puzzle of who might have shot Lord Gage.<\/p>\n

Huber is very skilled at creating a social surround for Kiera.\u00a0 The differences between her own status, as the daughter in law of someone titled, and the more what we would now think of as the upper middle-class home of the surgeon, Dr. Barker, and his wife, is beautifully and subtly accomplished, as are her portraits of the various townspeople who fall under their investigative eye.\u00a0 She\u2019s also excellent at portraying the selfish, imperious nature of Lord Gage \u2013 a personality that sorely tests both of his sons \u2013 with the contrast of his behavior as a doting grandfather.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s obvious Huber\u2019s experience with small children and babies is fairly recent, as her portrayal of Kiera as basically a working mother who is enamored of her believably needy infant (she must be fed and changed), seems about as realistic as any mother-baby pairing I\u2019ve encountered in fiction.\u00a0 While Kiera is able to hand baby Emma off to a maid, she\u2019s still getting up in the middle of the night to nurse.\u00a0 It\u2019s a slice of the novel that adds depth and humanity to the story.<\/p>\n

Center stage for me, however, was the relationship between Sebastian and his father, expertly understood and managed by Kiera, who sets aside her own frequent irritation and hurt feelings to help her husband deal with his own emotions.\u00a0 It\u2019s a tricky and satisfying father son story, ultimately including Henry\u2019s relationship with Lord Gage as well. The solution hinges on character, though Huber also includes a terrific and unforeseen twist toward the end. This is a thoughtful, complex, and wonderful read. \u2013 Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lady Darby\u00a0 #11 Anna Lee Huber\u2019s most outstanding quality as a writer is her educated heart.\u00a0 The way she parses human relationships is nothing short of brilliant.\u00a0 In the latest Lady Darby outing, she and her husband, Sebastian Gage, are summoned to the bedside of his disagreeable father – Lord Gage has been shot as … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1238,89,189,1237,1239,88,523],"class_list":["post-5049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1832-yorkshire","tag-anna-lee-huber","tag-berkley","tag-family-relationships","tag-highwaymen","tag-lady-darby","tag-robin-hood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5049"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5076,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049\/revisions\/5076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}