The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Bored and restless in London's Restoration Court, Lady Dona escapes into the British countryside with her restlessness and thirst for adventure as her only guides.
Eventually Dona lands in remote Navron, looking for peace of mind in its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds the passion her spirit craves in the love of a daring French pirate who is being hunted by all of Cornwall.
Together, they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him
My Thoughts:
I loved Frenchman’s Creek as a teenager and read it again this month for the first time since. It’s a swashbuckling tale of love and betrayal, featuring a bored noblewoman and a bold pirate in the time of Charles II. Put like that, it sounds like a real bodice-ripper but Daphne du Maurier is far too clever and subtle than that. As always, her Cornish setting is wonderfully depicted and all her characters swiftly and deftly drawn. Lady Dona St Columb is beautiful, restless, and filled with longing for some kind of adventure or danger. She has left London and her husband and taken her children to the country estate in Cornwall. Slowly she becomes aware of a mystery. A French pirate is terrorising the coast. By accident, Dona meets him and falls in love for the first time in her life. But she is a wife and mother, and she cannot abandon her family for the thrill of life on the high seas. And the Frenchman attracts danger: the local people want him hanged and all who help him.
Like all Daphne du Maurier’s books, Frenchman’s Creek creates a slow but inexorable tightening of dramatic tension that makes it impossible to stop reading. Full of atmosphere and mood, with complex and believable characters that you cannot help but care about, this slender novel is a masterclass in writing romantic suspense.
You might also like to read my review of The French Photographer by Natasha Lester:
