The Lamp of Fate

A girl is born under a shadow — her mother, a dancer, was cast off by a husband who never forgave her — and the same trap is set for the daughter twenty years later. Pedler was a trained musician who wrote some thirty romances between the wars, most of them in country houses and concert halls; she wrote for readers who wanted the pattern done properly, and she did it properly. Fifty-six plates, from Munch to Lavery, gather the dancers, portraits and shorelines that shadow this story of a life shaped by another's choices.