50. Cordelia Underwood, Or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League by Van Reid (Historical Fiction) 396 p.
I don’t use this word to describe books very often, but Cordelia Underwood is delightful. It was the only non-world lit book in the box my aunt sent me, because it was so charming she said I had to read it, and she was absolutely right.
Van Reid’s debut novel has been compared to the works of many other authors, but is apparently closest to Charles Dickens’s style, and was published periodically, like Dickens’s novels. I enjoyed it so much that it may inspire me to overcome my fear of Dickens…
The novel follows the lives of several characters in early July, 1896, in Maine. Miss Cordelia Underwood, a young woman in her early twenties, still lives at home with her parents in Portland when the family receives a trunk from her dead uncle Basil. It proves to contain, among other things, the deed to some land in the interior of the state that Basil has left to Cordelia. Meanwhile, Mr. Tobias Walton returns to Portland to close up the family home after the death of his aunt, and soon becomes friends with well-meaning Messrs. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump. They all become entangled in a series of sedate Victorian adventures.
Books read: 50/100 (Halfway done!)
Pages read: 14,386/25,000
