I borrowed this one from my local library, I wasn’t looking for it but I just saw it on the end of a shelf, in the wrong place and thought that I might as well see what it was like.

First published in 1923, this is the first book which DE Stevenson had published and it’s entirely different from the other two which I’ve read. To begin with it’s quite religious and it reminded me of the writing of another female Scottish writer, O. Douglas. But as the story rolled on the similarity disappeared.

It’s set in Scotland and it’s really about people who have made hasty marriages and quickly lived to regret it. Beth Kerr’s mother had fallen in love with the boatman who lived in her village of Kintoul and against her parent’s wishes she married him, but she soon realised that she didn’t know him at all and after having three children she died at a young age.

When Beth was still a teenager her father told her that a neighbour wanted to marry her and she ends up making the same mistake as her mother. Her much older friend Peter West also gets married to a woman that he barely knows.

This book is much more serious than her others but I believe that it wasn’t very popular. I can see why because I think it’s very far ahead of the time it was written in. The subjects are alcoholism, domestic violence and mental problems, all dealt with in a delicate way, but I know that in Scotland right up until the 1960s the attitude for men and women was that ‘you’ve made your bed and now you can sleep in it’, so this was a really radical storyline. In the end there’s really nothing to upset the strait-laced folk of 1923 but it dealt with taboo subjects of the day.

I must admit that I didn’t enjoy it as much as Mrs Tim of the Regiment or Miss Buncle’s Book both of which are really light-hearted and humorous, but I’m glad that I read it.