Title: The Golden Hour
Author: Beatriz Williams
Publisher: William Morrow 2019
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 468
Rating: 4/5 stars
Reading Challenges: Library; TBR Random
The Bahamas, 1941. Newly-widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in the Bahamas to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires?
Or so Lulu imagines. But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchess’s social circle, and the powerful cabal that controls the islands’ political and financial affairs, she uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies an ugly—and even treasonous—reality. In fact, Windsor-era Nassau seethes with spies, financial swindles, and racial tension, and in the middle of it all stands Benedict Thorpe: a scientist of tremendous charm and murky national loyalties. Inevitably, the willful and wounded Lulu falls in love.
Then Nassau’s wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century, and the resulting coverup reeks of royal privilege. Benedict Thorpe disappears without a trace, and Lulu embarks on a journey to London and beyond to unpick Thorpe’s complicated family history: a fateful love affair, a wartime tragedy, and a mother from whom all joy is stolen.
The stories of two unforgettable women thread together in this extraordinary epic of espionage, sacrifice, human love, and human courage, set against a shocking true crime . . . and the rise and fall of a legendary royal couple.
Our book club selection for April. I think I’ve really come to like Williams’s books. I love how she weaves together a real historical event (in this case WWII and the Windsors governance of The Bahamas) and a fictional narrator with a mystery. I loved Lulu and Elfriede and their two storylines. I loved learning more about The Bahamas and, yes, I even liked learning more about Wallis Simpson. Williams writes intriguing and realistic female characters. My biggest complaint with every one of her books that I’ve read is the male leads. They always seem to be such wet blankets. I never really buy the romance between the characters. For this book, Wilfred and Benedict really seem like one dimensional people. They have nothing to them. For that fact, I always take off a star from my rating. But overall, I really did enjoy this book.
