The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church (Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith).

"Старая скамья Пибоди: Рождественский роман в сельской церкви" - это трогательная история, разворачивающаяся в небольшой деревенской церкви в Новой Англии накануне Рождества. Главные герои - пожилая миссис Бэтси Томлинсон и ее внучатая племянница София Лэйн, которые занимают старую скамью Пибоди в церкви уже много лет. Но в этом году появляется новый прихожанин - мистер Джаст

The Old Peabody pew is a breathtaking Christmas romance about the delights and dangers facing two unlikely heroes as they navigate secrets and twists in a remote country church.

Ellen King, 30-something publicist stuck in London after the untimely death of her younger brother, finally escapes her workaday world for a glorious Christmas at her real Scottish home in pealing bells and glittering holly. “Welcome home, my darling,” she scolds her long-suffering appendix as she replaces antique stained-glass saints, fresh baked cookies in the tinning and water heating for the filling with her schoolboy nephews along the way to yelping and leaping through petals and pine on their morning bike ride.

Most precious for Ellen are the village church services, keenly illuminating an inner sanctuary and sidestorming a ghost town slick with Webspirits emails while igniting a burgeoning friendship with the quirky, soft-spoken rev, Donald Ogston, whose ancient gospel faithful encapsulates her own dimly remembered faith as well. Unencumbered by wealth or status, neither have met the right partner to share their deepest, truest Christan moments – until Ellen is beguiled by Donald's alluring good grace, spiced with secret joys and surreal twists, and the two fly off into a glittering fairy tale of angels, devils and tricky-dee love on the holy altar of peabody pew – late 19th century wool embroidered seats with carmine-red velvet cushions rudely stolen from the tranquility.

Intellectually and spiritually charged, the stunningly accomplished beauty and employee without a title – somewhat aristocratic with a heart bigger than any village hall – is charged by a strong sense of self-destruct against an implacable matrimonial nightmarishness – perilous treachery and doubts lurk upon both their paths.

Kate Douglas Smith ’ s intricate yarn of female friendship, passion and duty weaves together class, class difference, sisterhood, love and family secrets in an intoxicating, divine tale that stops you in your tracks. A subtle and tender story about self-discovery and free will in the context of religion, this novel gently threads ethics, ambition and lust along serpentine pathways. It may leave you aching and smiling, rallying in favour of tender, scrappy friendships, slow, searching journeys and dynamic heroines.