The Forgotten Room
by Karen White, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig
Penguin Group Berkley, NAL/Signet Romance, DAW
Three women, one mansion, a tangled history. The Forgotten Room traces three
generations of women in a family, the secrets they’ve concealed and what has
been hidden from them through the decades. From 1892 to 1944, the secrets are
slowly revealed through the stories of these women linked to a mansion on East
Sixty-ninth Street in New York City.
The architect who designed the house couldn’t know his
daughter Olive Van Alen would end up working as a maid in the the Gilded Age
mansion he created. The choices Olive made, what she’s hidden, would drive her
daughter Lucy Young to travel to Manhattan from her home in Brooklyn in search
of answers to questions about her past. Lucy’s daughter Kate Schuyler would
work as a doctor in a private hospital in the converted home during World War
II, caring for a mysterious, critically wounded patient to whom she is
inexplicably drawn.
Why does Kate’s patient Captain Ravenal have a miniature
portrait of a woman who resembles Kate? And why does it appear she is wearing a
pendant that belongs to Kate, handed down to her by her mother? How does this tie into the lives of
Olive and Lucy?
Combine romance, misunderstandings and the secrets of a
forgotten room at the top of a New York City mansion and you, too, will be
drawn into the narratives of Olive, Lucy and Kate. Moving back and forth from
one era to another over five decades, the reader gets to know these fascinating
women and their mysteries. Richly layered with complex characters and their
intriguing tales, The Forgotten Room
is an addictive read.
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