Jane of Gowlands

the long version

Faithful to her beloved Border, Anne Hepple lays the scenes of this book in the hill country where the Cheviots and Lammermuirs meet. The two World Wars have wiped out practically all of the Gow family except the fragile but stubborn Jane, her grandfather, the old bookseller, and her wicked and miserly grand-aunt, Janet. Both the old people are anxious that Jane should marry a Walter Gow of another branch, but Jane, as a child, met Keith, a boy a few years older than herself, while she was staying in the hills to recuperate after an illness and has fallen in love with him. At first the affair between the two young people is just laughed at, but then it is taken very seriously indeed and the two are forcibly parted. However, Jane fights her way through laughter and tears to happiness and her story makes enchanting reading.