There's something of the quality of The Hour Awaits and Invitation from Minerva (two of my favorites among March Cost's novels) in this story of a Russian girl of high estate in pre- Revolutionary Russia -- and of how in Stockholm her past catches up with her. Scarcely more than a child when she married Baron Stefan de Woru, she threw her marriage away in a fit of jealousy and ran away with another man, who couldn't stand out against his mother and marry her. With the Revolution- and the scattering of the nobility- Olga finds herself in the job of an interpreter (seven stars- seven languages) in a Stockholm department store, with a somewhat more glamorous hotel entertainment job on the side. She thinks the past is dead; perhaps she can even accept the attentions of a young American or her boss at the hotel. And then the two men from her past materialize. She runs away from one of them and goes to London, only to encounter the other. And in the process she finds she has at last grown up emotionally, and knows where her heart belongs. The story is skillfully woven; there is a winning minor character that reminds one of Mrs. 'arris, before she became too aware of the world; and- despite a certain pleasant flavor of the past in the writing- it is a delightful change from the crudities of much of today's writing.

Book details

• Format Hardcover
• Pages218 pages
• LanguageEnglish
• ISBN10B0007E2DJA
• ISBN13B0007E2DJA