Jessica James (1)

Transplanting Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel from the French Revolution to the American Civil War should work, and almost did, but the author fell into the trap of adhering far too closely to the source material, quoting whole passages verbatim even when the scene made no sense for her characters.

In 1863, Julia Dandridge returns from Washington City to her adopted childhood home in Virginia with her best friend after eight years away. She hopes to rekindle her teenage infatuation with Landon Graham, now the master of Welbourne, but finds him much changed. After the death of his younger brother Sawyer at the hands of the Union Army, Landon has left the Confederates and now has a reputation as an alcoholic recluse, hiding away instead of fighting for the South. And Landon views Julia with much suspicion after her abrupt move to the north and following refusal to return home after the death of his mother. The spark is still there but Julia cannot bear to see what Landon has done to himself, whereas he refuses to have anything to do with her. Meanwhile Julia finds herself distracted by romantic rumours of a daring hero called the Lion of the South who has been rescuing Confederate prisoners from under the very noses of the government with his brave band of men.

Truth? Myth? Fact? Fabrication? No one knew for sure. Yet all were eager to embrace the Confederacy's last, great hope…the mysterious legend who began to tip the scales in their favor.

I love The Scarlet Pimpernel and have read the original novel many times, so the plot and identity of the Lion were hardly surprising, but I enjoyed the references to the Baroness' book and was intrigued to follow how Jessica James would change the action and the characters to fit a different timeline. Nobility versus peasantry becomes North versus South, of course, and Julia hails from Washington City instead of Paris, whereas Landon still lives in Richmond! Instead of a flippant fop like Sir Percy, the Lion now hides behind the facade of a drunken deserter, and Chauvelin is replaced by three men hunting for the Lion, a Union general and a detective and his slimy nephew. Other differences include the Lion's motivation - avenging his brother's death - and Julia's upbringing with Landon's family in the South. Neither are Julia and Landon married, which gets confusing in later chapters (he's already made his lack of feelings clear, so why would Julia assume that Landon is duty bound to assist her?)

Some lines are borrowed from Orczy, which I loved to start with, even if spoken in a different context - Landon, I think, delivers Marguerite's motto of 'Money and titles are hereditary. Brains and courage are not.' And Sir Percy's witty ditty also undergoes a revision: 'He strikes them here. He strikes them there. He seems to strike most everywhere. Some say he's real. Others say he's not. Three cheers for the Lion, may he never be caught.'

Tension is lost by making Julia and Landon childhood friends on the verge of a romance instead of husband and wife - 'An estrangement would require a close association, and my memory of any such a relationship—other than as children—escapes me' - but this version feels more like a romance novel than the Baroness' adventure anyway. And Julia is constantly described as 'wild and untamed' as a youth but when she has to act to save the Lion, she fails miserably - not even a barefoot chase along the roadside to atone for her betrayal! And because we only meet her brother Gideon in the final chapters, I didn't really believe in her motivation for spying on the Lion either.

I also thought that the narrative was too slow and drawn out in places. Julia muses over and over on the change in Landon, where one interior monologue would have done, and the author often makes the same point twice in the same paragraph: Landon tilted his head to see if she were merely making conversation—or implying something deeper. He could decipher nothing from her expression. She seemed to be making an innocent statement, not suggesting a hidden meaning—yet he knew she was not the type of person to speak without intention.

I think this could have been a better book - and a tighter story - if the author had chosen one or two key lines or scenes from Orczy to drop into her own interpretation of the original novel, rather than losing important relationships like marriage but cleaving to the entire betrayal and Richmond chapters and not making any sense. I didn't really get a sense of the Civil War setting either - more Pimpernel does Wuthering Heights than Gone With The Wind.

A great idea lost in the translation, unfortunately.… (más)