Set against Regency England, World Wars I and II, and postwar England, three love stories intertwine in surprising and fateful ways

American Maggie Joyce, touring Derbyshire in 1947, visits, Montclair, an 18th century Georgian country house, that she is told was the model for Jane Austen’s Pemberley. More amazingly, the former residents of the mansion, William Lacey and Elizabeth Garrison, were the inspiration for the characters of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

Through letters, diary entries, and oral history, Beth and Jack Crowell, a couple who lives in the nearby village of Crofton, share stories of the people they say inspired Jane Austen. They also tell their own love story, made difficult by their vastly different backgrounds—she was one of the social elite while he was the son of a servant. When their son, Michael, travels home from his RAF station in Malta, Maggie may have just found her very own Mr. Darcy.

*Summary provided by Amazon.com

For all the Jane Austen fans out there, we are living in a year that is rich in Jane Austen sequels and we don’t have to go very far to get our hands on another dose of Jane Austen-inspired literature. Whether your taste goes for the daring, such as Mr Darcy, Vampyre or Pride or Prejudice and Zombies, or to the sedate and sweet, such as Loving Mr Darcy or Willoughby’s Return, there is definitely plenty of variety. Amongst all this reading along comes a book to be truly treasured and admired. A book rich in historical fact, and a complete treasure to read. That book is Searching for Pemberley.

I just adored reading Searching for Pemberley.  Rather than writing a sequel, which many authors seem to be doing, Mary Lydon Simonsen has gone down a different route. She’s written a unique novel based on the idea that the characters of Pride and Prejudice were actually real people, that Jane Austen knew and based her popular book on.

Meet Maggie, a young girl who is besotted with Jane Austen, as she travels through Derbyshire in search of the real “Darcy’s” and Bennet’s”.

Searching for Pemberley is rich in historical detail, as the book is set in the post-war England. History buffs will certainly be pleased with how accurate the historical facts are, and as someone who hasn’t read many post-war novels I found the historical details very enjoyable.

This was such a sweet, lovely read, with such rich characters and it was with much regret that it had to end. I could have read 1,000 pages on these wonderful characters, and I surely hope Mary Lydon Simonsen has more in store for us, in the future.

With the holidays just around the corner, I definitely recommend purchasing this beautifully written book for the Jane Austen fan in your family. I know I will be buying a copy for my favorite Jane Austen fans.

Searching for Pemberley is available November 23, 2009.

Authors Website: http://searchingforpemberley.weebly.com/

Thankyou to Sourcebooks
for forwarding this book for review.
Check out their website for amazing, new releases coming this Fall.

Tags: book review, jane austen, mary lydon simonsen, searching for pemberley

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