Product Description

This is another strong, satisfying novel, full of rich storytelling, by the author of the favourite "The Tea Rose". Set in London and Africa in the early days of the twentieth century, "The Winter Rose" introduces some remarkable new characters. India Selwyn-Jones is one of the rare new breed: a lady doctor. Her family, her eligible, ambitious fiance, the male medical establishment all object but she insists on defying convention and finds a post in London's East End. There she meets a gangland boss called Sid Malone. Criminal he may be but he also has a hidden charm, and a devastatingly attractive personality, and when India is called to treat him after a dockside brawl, their friendship becomes more intense. But Sid Malone is not his real name: and he has a past and enemies by the score, including India's determined and ruthless fiance whose intention is to marry into the family money as well as becoming a leading political figure. The stormy, noisy, brawling docklands are a natural home to the political fight as the fledgling Labour Party gets underway, and the struggle for the women's vote becomes more strident. But the East End is also a place for those who have a past to hide, a new beginning to find. And so the complicated strands of betrayal and pretence, of ambition and family, are woven again into a new drama, in a new country. Jennifer Donnelly, author of "A Gathering Light" as well as "The Tea Rose", has a wonderful gift for sweeping storytelling, with a lively cast of vivid characters, rich and detailed backgrounds. Her writing has a warmth and energy that takes all readers completely into her world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77883 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

Review
Praise for 'The Winter Rose': 'There's a hint of mystery, lots of interesting characters and locales such as India, Africa and California, with turn-of-the-century London at the centre of an engaging book. Recommended.' Barbara Taylor Bradford Praise for the 'The Tea Rose': 'This is a most seductive novel. You'll be charmed by the novels heroine -- her intelligence, her courage, her great heart. Despite her suffering -- a lost love, a tragic family -- there are moments you will want to cheer. It's the kind of novel where the writing is so fluid you feel the author simply loves telling her story. This is a splendid, heartwarming novel of pain, struggle, decency, triumph -- and just what we need in these times.' Frank McCourt 'I loved this vividly researched and wonderfully rumbustious yarn -- brilliantly told, great fun to read.' Simon Winchester 'Bold, brisk and beguiling, 'The Tea Rose' is a splendid brew of a book.' Sam Twining

Where's Jack the Ripper when you need him?India Jones - her name an echo, intentional or not, of the Harrison Ford film character - is spirited, moneyed, smart, high-toned, tough and diligent. She lacks only the ability to "smell a copper a mile away," a skill that would help her fit right in with her patients in Whitechapel, London's dingiest, grimiest, Cockneyest district, where she has set up a medical practice. Jack London wrote about the place in People of the Abyss, a book contemporaneous with the time at which Donnelly's far chunkier tome takes place. Like Donnelly's The Tea Rose (2002), this work features a heroine who cuts a fine figure in the world but who is less than complete without a man - preferably a dangerous sort, it seems, rather than a fellow do-gooder - by her side. India fills the bill with Sid Malone, a cruel-hearted and cruelly handsome gangster who is definitely not for the faint of heart. (Come the movie, Ian McShane is just the type for the part.) Both naturally resist the temptations of the other. Eventually, hormones trump sense; as Donnelly explains, "He stood, as if to go, then instead he bent to her, took her face in his hands, parted her lips with his tongue, and kissed her deeply." Once parted, those lips stay parted, even when Sid gets himself in trouble with the coppers. When he's released on his own recognizance, Sid arms himself with a pseudonym and goes off in search of India, who has transferred herself to Kenya to do good in coffee country. Seems she's got something that's his. Meanwhile, she's looking for something that's hers, too, but is stymied by the evil politician Freddie Lytton, who, come to think of it, has his Jack the Ripper qualities. Can love prevail over money? Can love outlast this too-long, too-average narrative? Only India's shadow knows.Horatio Alger meets a bodice-ripper meets Hemingway, with Dickensian dashes for good measure. Still, mostly a bodice-ripper, and a middling one at that. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Jennifer Donnelly is a children's book writer, tea enthusiast and amateur rosarian. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband. 'The Tea Rose' was her first novel.

Customer Reviews

The Rose series will always be my favorite
The Winter Rose was a great sequel to the Tea Rose. I knew that it would be a tough one to top, but the author did it! I am so glad I was able to see Fiona and Joe once more, and the addition of the new characters and the re-introduction of Charlie as Sid Malone was wonderful. Another wonderfully detailed written book by Jennifer Donnelly! Beware: This book is LONG! When I recieved it and cracked the binding for the first time and saw the 700 pages of 8 point type, I almost fainted! Well worth it though!

NOTE*** To those who are wondering about the third installment of these wonderful books, This is what Jennifer Donnelly Wrote me in March 2007:

"...Yes, the Rose books will be a trilogy, but it will be a year or two before Book Three -- The Wild Rose -- is ready. I'm just in the plannign stages now. I've a young adult title to write first, and I've got to get that one done before my YA publisher kills me. But I'm very much looking forward to revisting the Finnegans and their circle. They totally wear me out while I'm writing about them, but the minute I finish, I really miss them!..."

I think that somewhere down the line, they decided to call the american version "The Wild Rose" due to the fact that if you got to the Amazon.UK site under "The Winter Rose, it gives a link on the top of the page to the "The Wild Rose" on the U.S. amazon site. That is just a theory. Sorry, kiddos, i don't think we can expect the thrid book for a while, unfortunately...

Absolutely "un-putdownable"!
I totally agree with the reviewers before me - when I reached the end of 'The Tea Rose' I was almost devastated and experienced a real sense of loss, as I had come to so love the characters and couldn't believe the story had come to an end. Hence my pure, unadulterated joy to learn there was to be a sequel and I raced down to my local bookstore in Sydney, Australia to be the first to pick up a copy (yippee that Australia seemed to be the Guinea Pigs of the publishing world in this case, as we received our copies before the UK *and* the USA!). My husband took one look at it and named it my new doorstop as it was so enormous (!) but every page was a joy, and I whipped through it amazingly quickly...as the others have said, you simply can't put it down. I was reading this thing while I stirred my oatmeal in the morning, as I hummed my toddler to sleep for her midday nap, as I waited outside school to collect my son, and before I went to sleep every night. My copy came everywhere with me!

I agree, too, that you don't necessarily need to have read the original to enjoy the sequel, although having done so you will appreciate so much more of why the characters behave the way they do and understand more of how the plot relates to them. I didn't think I could ever love characters as much as Fiona and Joe, but India and Sid/Charlie absolutely captured my heart.

I have to add too, Jennifer Donnelly is just amazing with her writing. Not only is this lady a true-born storyteller (I'd love to attend a dinner party at her house for the chit-chat alone!) but she also researches everything so intricately that you completely step into her world with each page...it draws you in 100%. And she manages to capture the style of conversation, the history, the atmosphere of whatever region and country she's writing about, from England to the USA to Africa. I adored A Gathering Light/A Northern Light just as much as the Tea Rose duo and yet it was SUCH a different book and written so differently. Jennifer never ceases to impress me.

In closing, if anyone of influence *happens* to be reading this, all 3 books would make amazing films in my opinion :o) And specifically with the Tea Rose/Winter Rose books, surely I am not alone in now having a very real NEED now for a third!!

Jennifer I salute you - you're an inspiration! Can't wait for the next one, whatever it may be!

A sequel that's every bit as good as its sucessor
I loved the first novel in this series so much that when I heard the second book had been published in England years ahead of when it was coming out here I ordered it from the U.K. and waited eagerly for it to arrive in the mail. When it finally came I was so happy I did a little dance.

I admit to having very high expectations of this novel, but they were met in spades. "The Winter Rose" did not disappoint. Just like its predecessor, "The Winter Rose" is exciting, romantic, atmospheric and packed full of little historical details that make the words spring to life off the page.

You may not want to read past this point if you haven't read "The Tea Rose."

In "The Winter Rose" we meet up again with Charlie Finnegan, who at the end of "The Tea Rose" was discovered not to be dead, but living under the name of Sid Malone as a crime boss in London. Though his sister Fiona tries to get Charlie to come back to his family, he has lived too long as Sid to feel he can rejoin society.

Enter India Jones a recent graduate of medical school. Though she is from a highly privileged family, India wants to practice medicine in one of London's worst neighborhoods-White Chapel. Here she meets Sid and saves his life. Though she disgusted by his life of crime, India soon finds herself going to Sid to procure birth control for her poorest patients-something that "modern" doctors will not prescribe or allow patients to have. A bond soon forms between the two that evolves into something more than friendship-despite India's privileged, long time fiancé.

And as is a must in any great sequel, the characters we came to know and love in "The Tea Rose" have returned, and though they are not the center focus, we get to see what their lives have become since we left them.

Like "The Tea Rose", "The Winter Rose" takes place in two parts, years apart from one another. It takes us from the poorest sections of London to the high reaches of Kilimanjaro, from Coffee plantations to California hillsides. We met murderous men, compassionate women and scheming politicians. "The Winter Rose" is an epic love story, an adventure and a feast for any reader. It is a book to savor, to read slowly and take in all the details, though you may need to speed through it to find out what happens! I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Five stars. I eagerly await the third novel in this series. This author does write slowly, but the finished product is more than worth the wait