The English Painter

The book opens in 1926-The War to End All Wars has been over for eight years, though its long, dark shadow still haunts many of those who survived the horror of the war and the ensuing pandemic that decimated the worldwide population. Two survivors who languish in the pall of that conflict and the pandemic that followed are:

1. Major Alex Townes, whose shattered leg is a constant reminder of the price he paid for his service. The scion of a wealthy family, he lives in a Hyde Park mansion. He is scurrilous, and despondent, and fraught by the loss of men he led into the hell of no-man's land. But it is the secret guilt he carries for a far greater personal tragedy that hinders his ability to move on with his life. Only his passion for painting can soothe s his troubled soul.
2. Hannah Westly lost her brother and her fiancé in battle. After two years of nursing the maimed and mentally damaged husks of once vibrant youth, she is eager to recapture some semblance of normality. She reluctantly accepts the position of managing the Hyde Park estate of the injured Major Townes. She is immediately at odds with her limping, bitter, and brooding employer. She keeps the writing that is her one vanity secret.  

When Alex breaches his best friend's confidence, as she has befriended Hannah, and breaks into her quarters to read her secret manuscripts, he is astounded by her talent. Despite Alex's atones for his misdeed by helping Hannah get published. But when Hannah becomes betrothed to one of Alex's friends, he realizes he is in love with her and then discovers she feels the same way. When she submits to his advances while engaged to another, Hannah fears she will become no more than Alex's concubine, and flees. Alex finds her at her family home in the far northern reaches of England, gets down on his knee, tells her of his love, and she agrees to marry him. Hannah will become a famous author. Alex will become known as the English Painter because of his talented paintings of the dying era of the English gentry and their affinity for country estates, horses, and foxhunting. It is a story of love and loss, the silent burdens of our past that we often carry with wounded hearts and stained souls, and the thorny path to redemption and reconciliation.