Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Leeway Cottage: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Leeway Cottage: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Leeway Cottage: A Novel
    Ebook506 pages7 hours

    Leeway Cottage: A Novel

    By Beth Gutcheon

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, Sydney Brant, a wealthy girl of the Dundee summer colony, marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, as young lovers do, but Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to what the fortunes of Hitler's war will bring. By the time the war is over, Laurus's family has played an active role in Denmark's grassroots rescue of virtually all seven thousand of the country's Jews. Meanwhile, in America, Sydney has led a group knitting for the war effort, and had a baby.

    Combining the story of one long American twentieth-century marriage with one of the most stirring stories of World War II, Leeway Cottage is a beautifully written tour de force of a novel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061850301
    Unavailable
    Leeway Cottage: A Novel
    Author

    Beth Gutcheon

    Beth Gutcheon is the critically acclaimed author of the novels, The New Girls, Still Missing, Domestic Pleasures, Saying Grace, Five Fortunes, More Than You Know, Leeway Cottage, and Good-bye and Amen. She is the writer of several film scripts, including the Academy-Award nominee The Children of Theatre Street. She lives in New York City.

    Read more from Beth Gutcheon

    Related to Leeway Cottage

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Not-so-deserted Island

      Mar 30, 2023

      Not-so-deserted Island
      6 min read

    • Article

      Casting The Runes

      Feb 25, 2021

      “I was interested in magic and witchcraft and things like that from an early age,” says Dave Arthur. “Twelve or so. Dennis Wheatley’s novels… I read those. The Devil Rides Out, To the Devil a Daughter, The Ka of Gifford Hillary. Occult novels fascina

      19 min read

    • Article

      From The Foreword To Debths

      Jun 27, 2017

      From The Foreword To Debths
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Warning To The Fortean

      Jul 14, 2022

      A Warning To The Fortean
      9 min read

    • Article

      Kindervolk

      Jun 27, 2019

      Kindervolk
      5 min read

    • Article

      Charleston Farmhouse

      Jul 14, 2021

      Charleston Farmhouse
      2 min read

    • Article

      I Had A Fortress Once In Paradise

      Mar 1, 2021

      I Had A Fortress Once In Paradise
      10 min read

    • Article

      John Stefanidis

      Dec 7, 2021

      John Stefanidis
      3 min read

    • Article

      Low Expectations

      Feb 1, 2019

      Low Expectations
      7 min read

    • Article

      The English Home

      Oct 19, 2022

      The English Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Parsonage in New Hope

      Dec 4, 2023

      A Parsonage in New Hope
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Vigil In Westwood Lodge

      May 19, 2022

      A Vigil In Westwood Lodge
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Final Walk With Olds

      Oct 2, 2023

      A Final Walk With Olds
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dear Paul

      May 14, 2021

      Dear Paul
      9 min read

    • Article

      Indianola, Onward

      May 14, 2019

      Indianola, Onward
      11 min read

    • Article

      Staff Picks: Detritus, Dreamin’, Dinos

      Jul 14, 2017

      From Paleoart.   First published in 1966, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, by Justin Kaplan, is still the standard biography of our most enduringly funny writer—or, at least, the earliest writer who makes me actually laugh. I avoided it till now because I

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Jul 27, 2022

      The Old Un’s Notes
      4 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Close Reading of the Greatest Guest Book in the World

      Mar 1, 2017

      Love Shack. Tool Shed. Cabin of Dreams. Doll House. The Cabinet. The travelers who stay at Castro Cabin, the smallest and most remote guest cottage at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn, often invent their own names for the nine-by-twenty-foot rustic structure. T

      22 min read

    • Article

      A Countrywoman’s Notes

      May 11, 2022

      THIS morning, two letters arrived in the post. The writer in the first is offering me a ‘personal treasure’: a collection of COUNTRY LIFE that dates back to 1980. I have to admit this is not the first such offer that’s come my way. Over the years, I’

      3 min read

    • Article

      Getting a Handle

      Sep 25, 2019

      Getting a Handle
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Leeway Cottage

    3.5/5

    90 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Lourus and Sydney fall in love.Lourus is a well known musician from Denmark. Lourus and Sydney marry. Laurus goes off to defend Denmark in World War II. He leaves Sydney pregnant and stays in Europe for several years, for the duration of the war. During the war, Laurus's sister, Nina joins the resistance and eventually is caught and sent to a concentration camp. Laurus returns to the U. S. and he and Sydney have several more children. Their son is a trouble maker and is kicked out of a number of boarding schools. Sydney, like her mother, is more concerned with herself and how she looks to other people than she is her children. Each summer the family spends their time in Maine at Leeway Cottage participating in sailing, parties, and golfing. If you are interested in family sagas spanning from the 1930's to the 1990's this is an interesting story.
    • 4/5
      A Victorian summer house – Leeway Cottage – is the one constant in the life of Annabee Sydney Brant Moss. Covering the time period from 1924 to 1993, this book explores the relationship between two people who are very different. Annabee grows up the privileged only child of a father who dotes on her and a mother who seems to resent her. They live in Ohio but have a summer home on the coast of Maine. Laurus is a Dane, a musician who left Europe for New York, but who has a strong sense of responsibility towards his family and his countrymen.

      In general I like character-driven novels, and I really enjoyed this look at a marriage through the eyes of two very different people. Sydney had my full sympathies when she was still a child called Annabee. But as she matured I liked her less and less. It was interesting to see the great influence her mother had on her despite her efforts to distance herself from Candace. Laurus was more of an enigma. A musician and a patriot, he chafed under the restraints imposed by the war, but still felt a patriotic duty to serve. His facility with languages and deep knowledge of Europe made him valuable to the Allied forces, but his fame meant he had to remain at a distance. That forced restraint seems to have never left him, however.

      I’m struggling with how to describe the book because I really don’t want to give an entire synopsis, and there is much that happens. The story covers several decades, after all, though much of the action is concentrated during the World War II era. I found the scenes dealing with Laurus’ family back in Denmark during the war particularly compelling, and I definitely wanted more of this story. But Gutcheon uses multiple points of view and moves back and forth in time as people remember past events, so I’m left feeling as if I’ve only scratched the surface.

      I am reminded that there are many stories in the people around me; that what we see of a person – even one we think we know well - may be only the tip of the iceberg.
    • 4/5
      The characters in this book were so believable, not especially loveable, but certainly believable. The story ranges from Sydney's childhood to her death and the road from being an emotionally scarred child to a an emotionally scarring mother and grandmother. Unfortunately, so often we become the very people we have despised earlier. The plot involving the Danish resistance during WWII was very interesting and one that I have not run across in any other historical fiction. The writing was readable, precise, and compelling.The only reason I gave this a four star rather than five was the rushed feeling I got during approximately the last fourth of the book. It almost felt as we were fast-forwarding just to get to the end. And, although the chapter of Nina's horrific experiences in a German concentration camp helped explain her personality, it almost seemed a bit gratuitous, but it did provide a sharp contrast to the selfish and shallow yet sad Sydney.I would recommend this to any lover of historical fiction especially during WWII and after.
    • 5/5
      i bought this on a discount table and did not expect much so i was very pleasantly surprised at this well written story.story moves between a coastal cottage are in Maine and NYC. it moves back in time to Nazi occupied Denmark and post war USA. the characters of Sydney and Laurus are well defined and reached out to me. I could understand them both. I was sorry that sydney degenerated into not such a nice person as i quite liked her character at the start. She was always interesting though as was her mother Cassandra. i really enjoyed this book
    • 4/5
      Young Anna Brant adores her father and hates her mother. Unfortunately for her, her father dies when she is very young and she spends most of her youth rebeling aginst what she considers to be her mother's vulgarities. The only place she is truly at home is at their summer home in Dundee, Maine. There she has what she considers her true friends, and there, as she enters her teenage years, she discovers the world of music. As soon as she is 18, Anna collects her inheritance, changes her name to Sydney, and hurries off to music school to study singing. While there, she falls in love with a young Danish musician and they marry, They believe they are well matched; but when World War II separates them, their personalities seem to grow apart and their lives after the war take several dramatic turns sending them farther and farther away from each other.In the end, depite her protestations, Sydney has become all too much like her mother and is making the same mistakes with her own children that her mother made with her.This was a very good read and it would be a great book to discuss in a book group. I could see many friendly arguments about Anna/Sydney's motivations and feelings.
    • 2/5
      I really did not like this book. It started well, hence the two generous stars, but about halfway through when WWII ended the book fell apart for me. My favorite characters turned into unrecognizable bores. The final straw was the account of a concentration camp toward the end of the book. I know the camps were terrible and I enjoy a lot of holocaust fiction but this was over the top for me. It lacked any hope or humanity.
    • 5/5
      I found this an absolute page-turner, with very memorable characters. The sequel, "Goodbye and Amen" is due out August 2008.
    • 4/5
      Because I read & enjoyed Beth Gutcheon's "More than you Know" & "Leeway Cottage" takes place in the same locale (the coast of Maine) i thought Leeway Cottage would be in the same style as "More than you Know" only taking place in the middle of the 20th century rather than in the beginning. While sharing some of the same residents of the Maine village - The grocer, the librarian - the books are quite different in their outlook. The main character of Leeway Cottage, introduced as a child called Annabee who later changes her name to Sydney, is from the group of summer visitors whose permanent home is in the midwest & whose economic status is far higher than any native of coastal Maine. Annabee is drawn as a sympathetic character, who is attracted to the life of the musicians & artists of a neighboring summer colony. Her mother is the typical rich matron to whom wealth & status is everything & we cheer Annabee (now Sydney) as she confronts her mother & marries a pianist from Denmark. Here the novel takes a turn away from the summer colony social scene. WW2 arrives & Denmark is invaded & taken over by Nazi's. Sydney's husband Laurus joins the OSS & spends the war years in England aiding the Danish resistance. Because they are half Jewish, Laurus's family are pursued by the Nazis. Laurus's young sister, Nina becomes a resistance fighter & some of the book's best scenes are in the contrast of the sheltered life of the Summer cottage residents & Nina's attempts to survive the occupation. After the war, Sydneys character changes as she becomes more & more like her mother & the two constantly compete to one-up each other. The book closes as the 3 grown children of Sydney & Laurus prepare to sell Leeway Cottage.