The Necklace

What a wonderful story for a snow day!  With hot cocoa and a warm blanket, you can sit back and caught up in the Quincy family's drama.  Great Aunt Lou Lou has passed away and left the next generation to divide up the house, jewelry and household items.  Of course there is a family scandal that has been swept under the carpet all these years that will be exposed when the dust clears.  There will also be romance and a tug of war with a priceless necklace. 

Claire McMillan has created a wonderful picture of the Quincy family, trying to hold onto the old world charm that surrounded their family, when there were weekend house parties and people had servants who brought around champagne while guests played lawn tennis and croquet.

It is 2009 and Nell Quincy Merrihew comes back to the ancestral home of the Quincy family after many years.  Her mother left for good, years ago, married and with their child Nell had always lived in Oregon far from the family home.  Summer visits, Nell remembers with her cousins, Pansy and Emerson, where when she tried to fit in.  Now they are going to hear the reading of Lou Lou's will.

When the the will is read and Nell is named executor of the estate and given a necklace as her inheritance everyone wonders at the sanity of Lou Lou at the end of her life.  But as the story unravels with a look back in history of Lou Lou and her brothers growing up, we see how history long covered up is being exposed and Lou Lou is finally trying to right some wrongs.

Ambrose, Ethan and Lou Lou were young adults in the early 1920s.  May is the girl of Ambrose's dreams, but it seems Ethan also has his eye on her.  Ambrose had a traveling spirit that could not be contained.  He goes off and travels the world to come home to so many changes.  Ambrose needs to travel even though it means leaving the woman he loves behind.  He is not willing to commit tot marriage or give up his world trip.  May isn't willing to take any chances, traveling unmarried with Ambrose or promise to wait for him. 

This is a story of lost opportunities and chances taken and missed.  The story of love declared too late.  But also the story of finding out that sometimes feeling the outsider is not always what it seems.  There are family secrets that continue to affect family relationships for generations.