What Touches The Heart At All

About the Book

Two Americans (New Yorkers) pack up their two children at sensitive ages and move to an excessively large excessively furnished house in a glorious setting overlooking the Channel in Devon, England. The children are enrolled in a two-room school which proves to be excellent but the furnished house disintegrates. The absentee English landlord tries to get rid of the house by selling it, at first without success, but a buyer and would-be new landlord finally materializes, promises more than he delivers in the way of furniture, and , leaving his tenants in possession, departs for his job overseas. The Americans stay on, for the sake of (now tow) fine schools and the loveliness of the village, but are compelled to participate in the ferocious battle between the two landlords over what in the house was sold and what remains the property of the original owner. The American husband and father defends his turf by a neat exercise of wit, though his risky maneuver costs him something in self-respect, and meanwhile the house continues to fall apart. Throughout all this turmoil the children thrive and at least two members of the family take root in the place so successfully they would much prefer to stay in it, but the attacks on everybody's composure finally prove too much and at the end of two years, the Americans return home. Considerable exposure here to the life of an English village and to miscellaneous English characters, including some villainous.

About the Author

The author holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Bennington College (1950-51). She worked in trade book publishing in New York city and later in the publications department of a major philanthropical foundation. She married in 1960 and subsequently gave birth to a son, and five years later to a second son. She has traveled extensively in Europe and various countries around the world; at first with her husband, then with her family, and also solo. Joan settled for two years with her family in Devon, England. She has published several articles in general interest magazines and earlier versions of two of the chapters in the present book in a (now defunct) literary magazine. This is her first published book.