Flowers from the Storm

The recap

Christian Langland, Duke of Jervaulx, seems to have everything: rank, wealth, a dazzling gift for mathematics and a well-earned reputation for pleasure. Maddy Timms has almost none of that. A devout Quaker, she looks after her blind father, a mathematician who collaborates with the duke on problems few people in England could follow. Then a sudden collapse leaves Christian able to speak only in broken fragments, and his family, convinced he has lost his reason, has him confined to an asylum. When Maddy encounters him there, she alone begins to suspect that the brilliant, arrogant man is still inside, fighting to be understood. Her faith tells her plainly where her duty lies; it says much less about the feelings that follow. Laura Kinsale renders Christian's fractured inner world with startling intimacy, and the slow, careful collision of two utterly different lives makes this one of the genre's most ambitious and emotionally demanding love stories. It asks a great deal of its readers, and rewards them richly.