The Wolf and The Dove
   Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
  1996 Avon Books NY USA
   ISBN: 0380007789
 

As mighty Norman warriors claim England, for his valor the Wolf is gifted the bountiful Darkenwald lands and its lovely Saxon heir who must negotiate for life, peace and honor.

I read this saga back in the 70s during our sexual revolution, when Kathleen Woodiwiss was a pioneer in the deeply researched historical romance. She went a step further than others and included some intoxicating erotica and fascinating anthropological minutiae. Not so much the history of men, although she does not stint on the details of the daily lives of those tall, clean-shaven Norman warriors, their armor and weaponry, their horses and servants and their code of honor.

Rather, Ms. Woodiwiss opens up a grand view of a small family manor and its surrounding lands, with its kin and cattle, herbs and cobwebs, stone homes and woven clothes. We become privy to the domestic relationships and the main hall where, eventually, everyone meets. We are gifted with the layout of such a home, how its kitchen was run and what its bedrooms were like. Details that fascinate women.

Long ago, the author who pioneered the Regency Romance genre with her skill at recreating those times, their customs and languages which made for wonderful reading, also wrote about the time of the Norman Conquest. This was Georgette Heyer, also known for a handful of rather flat and dated mysteries. Simon the ColdHeart was the medieval book Ms. Heyer penned that held me entranced for years and I vouch it is the grandfather of Ms. Woodiwiss' The Wolf and the Dove.

In this book we are granted the sight of a daughter of the land, having to make dreadful decisions as the conquerors invade, taunt and kill her father and their serfs, humiliate her mother into madness and bicker and barter for her life. We must watch the end of a way of life; watch and learn how women survive. And then the Wolf arrives and we must learn that we cannot judge all simply by the cruelty of the first nor must we expect, upon meeting the second, that all his countrymen will be as he.

It took years of scouring second-hand bookshelves to again find a copy of The Wolf and the Dove, because, like Heyer's Simon the Coldheart, it had sunk beneath the luscious weight of Ms. Woodiwiss' later and far more accepted novels.

This fine read is a primer on how males and females adapt to each other; to new social mores; to honoring the dead and to providing for the future. And while it is too, a study in bastardy, it is one fine, mouthwatering romance. She hasn't bettered it yet.
(04/12/99)

Rebecca