The Proprietor

– a novel –

“… Her story centers on Augustus Walmer, wealthy, worldly – but with a streak of idealism – a man of undeniable fascination and disturbing mystery. We meet him first in 1836, aged thirty, when he becomes the proprietor of a group of islands off the south coast of England. His aim is to improve the lot of the people who live there, eking out a meager existence. We leave him twenty years later, when he has succeeded in his aim for the islanders, yet has failed in his own life – the life of the heart – having lost the two women to whom he has been irresistibly, illicitly drawn, the elegant Amelia Pontefract, and the Island Girl, Adela, whose power to transform his barren existence he has recognized too late. …”