I'm glad I found this old book! Interesting characters, descriptions of the writing process, beautiful scenery. It was a lovely holiday. ( )

I was a huge fan of Helen MacInnes back in the day, and when Liz McC talked about Friends and Lovers on her blog recently, it made me think of MacInnes' other non-espionage novel. I downloaded a sample and was instantly hooked. I hadn't remembered nearly as much as I thought I had, nothing beyond the fact that it was set on a ranch and there was a romantic storyline.

The main characters are Sarah (Sally) Bly, a 37YO cookbook writer, and Margaret Peel, a 53YO woman of independent means (she wrote a light novel when she was young and it made a lot of money for her). After nearly two decades in Europe (including resistance work during the war), they're back in the US and driving across the country when they get sidetracked in Wyoming and decide, on the spur of the moment, to buy a rambling ranch house and use it as a retreat for writers. The ranch owner, Jim Brent, needs money and sells the house while keeping the other buildings and the ranch, and so the working ranch will coexist with a literary retreat. Sally and Margaret invite half a dozen unpublished writers for a month in the summer, and the rest of the story is about their experiences, the interactions between the ranch and small-town Wyoming folk and the city people, and Jim and Sally's slow-burn romance.

MacInnes writes very well, with an eye for detail and an easy conversational style. She's a political writer, and there are a number of scenes in which different characters debate the war, communism v. liberalism, and the like. There is a city v. country thing going, with the New York City folk being jaded and ignorant of what the "real" people in the rest of the country are like, but there are also some amusing stereotypes of country folk. The cowboys, for the most part, are depicted sympathetically and non-stereotypically, and the one extended scene with Native Americans is relatively nuanced, especially given when the book was written. Different characters embody different approaches to war, politics, and literature, and there is quite a bit of sharp commentary on the writing profession and the New York (and Hollywood) literary communities.

The romance is understated, probably to a fault for romance genre readers, but I enjoyed it a lot. There is one negatively-stereotyped female character (along with some dated language about psychological issues) and there is one stereotypical Communist-sympathizing character, but I didn't find them to distract from the overall strength of the book. In the end MacInnes is pretty good about showing the benefits of city life, not just the bad points, although she clearly tilts the deck toward big-sky-America authenticity.

If you like Mary Stewart, you'll probably like this novel, although there's no suspense to speak of. But the writing and the characterization are similar and of similar quality. ( )

[Rest and be Thankful] is not about spies like most of her novels. I found it a bit up-and-down. Some of the episodes were interesting but overall it could've used more plot. Basically a group of aspiring writers spend a month in Wyoming. I like the two women that were the main characters but the minor characters could've used some more development. I wanted to know what the writers were writing. It was too simplistic in thinking everyone in Wyoming was happy and wonderful and everyone from New York was unhappy and bad. ( )

A departure for thriller/espionage writer MacInnes; this is an out-and-out romance, though one for the "thinking" crowd. I liked it. It is head & shoulders above MacInnes' one other "romance", Friends and Lovers. ( )

4086 Rest and Be Thankful, by Helen MacInnes (read 31 Oct 2005) This is the eighth book by MacInnes I have read:

127 Assignment in Brittany, by Helen MacInnes (read __ ___ 1943)
128 Above Suspicion, by Helen MacInnes (read __ ___ 1943)
2099 Cloak of Darkness, by Helen MacInnes (read 13 Sept 1987)
2556 Prelude to Terror, by Helen MacInnes (read 28 Nov 1993)
2583 The Salzburg Connection, by Helen MacInnes (read 19 Feb 1994)
3242 The Snare of the Hunter, by Helen MacInnes (read 8 Sep 1999)
3249 Neither Five Nor Three, by Helen MacInnes (read 4 Oct 1999)
4086 Rest and Be Thankful, by Helen MacInnes (read 31 Oct 2005)

and some of them I really liked. This book published in 1949 is a total bore, having no similarity to the others. Apparently it was a result of a visit to Wyoming and the story tells of two ladies who lived in Europe and stumbled onto a ranch, bought a house there, invited some New York writers to visit, and tells of the non-exciting things done and said duirng the month-long visit, ending up with one of the women marrying the ranch owner. A total boring book which I never would have finished if I stopped reading a book after I started it. ( )