Sophie Edmonton, 1825-1846

Sixteen-year-old Lady Sophie Edmonton lives on a “grand estate in the English countryside” and her father is itching to find her a husband. Sophie sneaks off for a swim in the lake one day and meets Henry Patman. She immediately falls in love. Ugh, do all these sagas have to be the same? Sophie and Henry begin meeting in secret, and seven weeks later they decide to get married. Sophie’s father is an important duke and they know no clergyman will marry them, so they decide to sneak out Saturday night and ride into another town where nobody knows who Sophie is. The night they’re supposed to leave, Sophie discovers her diary is missing. Her plan has been discovered and when she and Henry try to leave, they’re stopped by the duke. Sophie’s father has Henry arrested and deported. A year later, Sophie marries Lord Charles Elliot. Twenty years after that, Sophie’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Emma, announces she wants to be an actress. Charles refuses to let her.

Henry Patman, 1825-1839

Henry doesn’t do so well in America. He scrounges along for thirteen years doing odd jobs and losing poker games. Then some guys he owes money to threaten his life and Henry knows he needs to get out of New York. He finally sells the locket Sophie gave him, and it seems to bring him luck. He goes to a poker game and ends up winning a plantation, complete with a house and employees, in Georgia.

Emma Elliot, 1851-1852

When Emma turns twenty-one, her father announces he’s made a match for her and she’ll be marrying some earl or duke or something. Sophie knows Emma is unhappy about this, so she gives her a bunch of money she’s been saving and tells her to run away and try to make it as an actress. So Emma changes her name to Vanessa and goes off to London. One night, Vanessa gets lost and wanders into a bad section of town. A couple of guys attack her and knock her out. When she wakes up, a bobby named Patrick O’Sullivan takes her to his mother’s house since the thugs took her purse. Patrick’s mother, Maggie, takes Vanessa in and tells her to stay as long as she likes.

Patrick falls in love with Vanessa and at Christmas, he asks her to marry him. She accepts, but the next day she lands an acting gig with a traveling theater troupe. She takes it and leaves. By July, Vanessa and her director, Grady Philips, have fallen in love. When Grady proposes, he confesses that he’s not really just a poor actor and director. His father is a marquess. Vanessa laughs and says her father is an earl. They take this as a sign that they are meant to be together.

James Patman, 1861-1864

When Georgia secedes from the union in 1861, Henry’s son James is the only member of his family who thinks slavery is wrong. He packs his bags and leaves the plantation to go join the Union army. He starts leading slaves north and falls in love with one of them. Her name is Hope, and James marries before the end of the year. The following April, Hope is seven months pregnant and in no condition to help James as he guides fleeing slaves. He leaves Hope at a safe house, a friend’s plantation, for two days. When he comes back, he finds the plantation owners hanged and Hope shot.

In 1864, James makes his way to the plantation where he grew up. It’s a ruin now, but the old butler, Angus, is hanging around. He tells James that Henry died at Shiloh in 1862 and his brother died at Gettysburg. With no family left, James decides to move west.

Katherine, 1886

Sixteen-year-old Katherine Richmond is Emma/Vanessa’s granddaughter and an actress just like her parents and grandmother. Katherine is offered the chance to tour America with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In Kansas, she meets John Patman, who works at the bar next door to the theater. They fall in love over the next two weeks and John plans to give her an engagement ring on her last night in Kansas and hopefully convince her not to go back to London. Unfortunately, the bar is held up and John is locked in the store room. John’s boss is due to arrive at eleven, but Katherine is supposed to leave on the eleven o’clock train. He gets to the train station just in time to see the train disappear.

A week later, Katherine is in New York. She reads a newspaper article about a couple of bandits and finds out John wasn’t at her last performance because he was tied up in the back room at the saloon. She hops a train back to Kansas and goes to John’s house, but John’s brother, Brewster, tells her John left town the day after Katherine left for New York. Brewster has no idea where he is. Katherine goes back to New York and receives a telegram at the hotel. Her family’s theater in London has burned down, killing her entire family.

John Patman, 1890

John wanders around out west until he meets a cowgirl named Samantha Parker. They get married in 1890 and file a homestead claim in Texas. By 1893, they’re suffering pretty badly and John is thinking of leaving the ranch to go to San Antonio to find work. In preparation for leaving Samantha alone with little Johnny, John starts digging a well and finds oil.

William Patman, 1924

John’s youngest son, William (or, as I like to call him, Bruce ver. 1.0), is in his last year at Harvard when he falls in love with Helena Howard. His friend Frederick has to teach him how to not be a total ass all the time. William eventually asks Helena to marry him and she accepts. Helena gives birth to her son Paul on New Year’s Day 1927, but the baby dies tragically six weeks later.

Cassandra LeMov, 1941-early 1950s

Katherine Richmond married late in life, and in 1941 her twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Cassandra, gets her medical degree and decides to go to Europe to work on the wounded soldiers. Two years later, she falls in love with Spencer Light, one of her patients, and they get married. A few months later, Spencer dies and Cassandra has a miscarriage.

Cassandra goes back to New York City after the war, and in 1945, Spencer’s best friend, Peter Vanderhorn, comes to see her. They begin to see each other regularly, but when Peter asks Cassandra to marry him, she turns him down because she can’t have children. He says it doesn’t matter and they get married. Eventually, Cassandra proves the doctors wrong and gives birth to Marie.

Reginald Alexander Rainer, 1946-early 1950s

Reginald is a poor kid from L.A. who manages to make it to Harvard. After his graduation, he gets a job at Patman Investments in New York and takes an instant liking to his boss, William Patman. William takes Reginald home with him for Thanksgiving, and Helena is weirded out when she notices how similar William and Reginald look. After some investigating, it comes out that Reggie and Paul were born around the same time at the same hospital, and they got switched. Reggie becomes a Patman and marries his girlfriend, May Chandler. A few years later, Henry Patman is born.

Marie Vanderhorn and Henry Patman, late 1960s

Marie and Henry are high school sweethearts, but Marie is diagnosed with leukemia just before graduation. She doesn’t want to tell Henry and have him worry about her, so he goes on the cross-country roadtrip he’s been planning thinking Marie is just anemic. At some point during his trip, Hank gets a letter from Marie. She’s breaking up with him. Hank decides not to go back east. He’ll stay in California. This is totally stupid since the Wakefield saga has him going to high school in Sweet Valley with Ned, but whatever. Four years later, Marie is in Los Angeles and she runs into Hank. They make up, get married and then Bruce is born.

The Cover: I couldn’t even tell you who these people are. I’m thinking that’s Sophie and the OG Henry in the middle. Top left must be John dancing around because of the oil. The actress could be Emma/Vanessa or Katherine. I have no idea who that’s supposed to be in the bottom left. The chick’s shirt is kind of hippie-ish, so maybe that’s Alice and Hank? And the lineup on the right…my guess is Sophie, John, Marie and Bruce. I guess.

Lili, 1789-1793

Lili de Beautemps lives a life of luxury at Winterthorn, her family’s estate in The Loire Valley, France. Her best friend is Marie Oiseleur, her maidservant. Lili has a little crush on Marie’s brother, Georges, though she won’t admit it to herself. One day, while out riding with a suitor, Lili’s horse gets spooked and gallops away with Lili still on it. Lili is terrified, but Georges rides up on his own horse and calms Lili’s down. The fact that a commoner saved her life while a nobleman stood by and watched makes Lili rethink her values.

France is in a sorry state of affairs. The poor want a revolution. Marie tells Lili that the servants have been holding secret meetings. The townspeople want the servants to let them into Winterthorn so they can “take up arms” against Lili’s family. Lili doesn’t believe it and thinks it’s something Marie heard from Georges, who has gotten all into the revolution lately. She teases Georges the next morning and is surprised when he grabs her arm and angrily tells her Marie wasn’t lying and Lili should pack her bags and leave Winterthorn.

The next night, Lili is dragged from her room with her hands bound and a rag in her mouth. She and her family are taken outside, where an angry mob has set up a guillotine. Her father and brothers are beheaded, but as Lili steps up to the platform, a hooded man on a horse rides out of the woods, snatches Lili up and rides off again. The horseman is Georges, of course. He takes her to a nearby village and leaves her to fend for herself. Lili wants to tell him she loves him, but he rides away.

Three years later, Lili is living in Paris and working as a seamstress. One day, she runs into a woman named Madame Fouchette, who was Countess Fouchette before the revolution. It’s clear the Fouchettes have managed to retain their wealth, so Lili doesn’t let on that she’s poor now. A few days later, she receives an invitation to a party being given by the Fouchettes. She wants to go, but the nicest thing she owns is the silk dressing gown she was wearing the night she was taken from her family’s home. She decides to whip it up into something fashionable and attend the party.

At the party, a handsome young man asks her to dance four times. Later, another party guest tells Lili how lucky she is to have caught the eye of Count Matthieu de Bizac. When the party is over, Lili goes home to her sad, poor life knowing she will never see the count again. The next day, however, she receives a bouquet of flowers and a note from the count asking her to see him that afternoon. Lili and Matthieu begin to see a lot of each other, and after a month, decide to get married.

While on their honeymoon in Italy, Matthieu tells Lili he knows she was poor and working as a seamstress. Lili is ashamed, but Matthieu assures her he still loves her and knew the truth before he married her. For the rest of the honeymoon, he consistently leaves her alone while he attends to business. They go back to Paris, but live in a hotel while Matthieu looks for a new house for them to live in, claiming he doesn’t want to live in his family’s home. A month later, Lili wakes up to find Matthieu gone, along with all his possessions and the servants.

Lili goes to Madame Fouchette, who says she assumed Lili knew the count was married. His marriage to Lili was a fraud. Now Lili has no cash, no husband and she’s pregnant. Oh, dear. Lili finds an apartment over a shop and befriends the woman downstairs, Marie Chardin. Lili dies giving birth to her child, but before she does, she names the baby Celeste and asks Marie to raise her.

Georges, 1800

Georges Oiseleur has done quite well for himself since the revolution and is now a man of means, but it’s nothing to him without Lili, whom he’s always loved. He’s been trying to find her and has even done the groundwork to get some of the de Beautemps fortune back to her. When he finds out Lili died in childbirth, he vows to find the child and pass on the de Beautemps estate.

Celeste, 1809-1865

Celeste has grown up well and loves the Chardins as much as if they were her real family. When she turns sixteen, she goes to work as a maid in the house of the Marquis de Bocage. The family is wretched, especially Emilie, the daughter it is Celeste’s duty to wait on.

Georges Oiseleur is a friend of the marquis, and he sees Celeste at the mansion one day. They speak briefly, and Georges goes home thinking of how much the girl reminds him of Lili. It’s clear Celeste does not have much in the way of luxury, so he speaks to the housekeeper. Suddenly, Celeste begins finding things in her room: books, a down comforter, pastries. One day, Emilie comes up to Celeste’s room. She sees all the finery and accuses Celeste of stealing. Celeste tells Emilie that servants are not slaves and she’s just as entitled to nice things as Emilie is.

Georges arranges for Solange Grandet, Emilie’s tutor, to teach Celeste how to read. In his dealings with the teacher, Georges starts to fall in love with Solange. One day, Celeste is in the orchard reading Gulliver’s Travels when a young man approaches her. He talks to her about books for a while, and then suddenly gets back on his horse and rides off. Celeste thinks he’s incredibly handsome and wonders who he is. Turns out he is Marc de Bocage, the marquis’s son. Celeste is serving dinner when she recognizes him, and she drops a plate.

Marc and Celeste have many awkward moments during his visit, and Marc can’t get Celeste off his mind. He knows they aren’t meant to be because of their different stations in life, so he agrees to host a ball with Emilie, hoping he will find a girl to make him forget Celeste. The night of the ball, Marc has an awful time until he sees Celeste outside, where she is looking in the window to watch Marc. He runs outside and chases Celeste down. He catches her and they kiss.

After a few weeks of secret meetings, Marc proposes to Celeste. She says no because his family will disown him and she doesn’t want him to lose his family and his inheritance because of her. For a week, Marc asks Celeste to reconsider, but she refuses. He finally goes to his parents, who refuse to bless such a union. That night, Marc’s mother accuses Celeste of seducing Marc and tells her to be gone by morning.

Celeste packs her things and sets out on foot the next morning. Georges is riding by in his carriage and offers her a ride. She tells him everything that happened, then somehow gets on the subject of her dead mother. She shows Georges the locket she wears that contains her mother’s picture. Georges is shocked and takes Celeste back to his house. He tells her all about her mother and Winterthorn and the fortune that rightfully belongs to Celeste, and explains that as trustee of the family’s estate, he is Celeste’s legal guardian. As such, he goes to Marc’s parents and explains everything to them, clearing the way for Marc and Celeste to get married. In the end, Marc marries Celeste, and Georges marries Solange.

The very next chapter suddenly jumps fifty years into the future, and Celeste and Marc are welcoming their granddaughter, Rose, into the world.

Rose, 1880-1898

Rose and her best friend, Pierre Oiseleur, have grown up together, but in the fall of 1880, Pierre goes off to boarding school. He writes Rose letters and her friends tease her about her “beau.” Rose tells them it’s just Pierre, nobody special. She doesn’t know that Pierre is in love with her.

Five years later, Rose is in school at the Sorbonne, living in a dorm with bohemians her parents would never approve of. Pierre lives nearby in a townhouse. Pierre doesn’t like the guy Rose has been seeing lately and tries to tell her he’s broken a lot of hearts, but Rose says she can take care of herself. Three months later, she comes to Pierre’s house in tears and says Leo was seeing two other women behind her back. Pierre wonders if he has a shot now, but Rose says she’s done with men for good.

When Rose and Pierre are about to graduate from college, Pierre finally tells Rose he loves her. She says she doesn’t believe in love, and Pierre walks away.

Things are chilly between them for a while, but two years later they’re as close as ever. Rose gets a letter from her mother telling her to come home for the weekend for a special party the Oiseleurs are throwing. Rose can’t wait to see Pierre again and thinks that maybe she’s ready to love him now. When she gets home, however, Pierre introduces her to Christianne, his fiancée.

In 1893, Rose’s first novel is published. To celebrate, her boyfriend, an American named Robert Eastman, proposes to her. Rose tells him she needs more time to think. She takes a walk and runs into Pierre. She hasn’t seen him since his wedding, and it pains her to see him with his wife and twin sons, but when he’s gone, she feels better. She tells Robert she’ll marry him. Five years later, in March of 1898, Isabelle Eastman is born.

Isabelle, 1914-1960

At sixteen, Isabelle goes to her first dance. There are lots of men in uniform there and one of them is the most handsome man Isabelle has ever seen. She wants to catch his attention, but before she can, a man named Charles Doret asks her to dance. From him, she finds out the handsome man’s name is Jacques Oiseleur. He never asks her to dance, but Isabelle can’t stop thinking about him. The next day, she skips school and goes to the barracks where the army men are staying. She finds Jacques and they go for a walk together.

They start seeing each other regularly, and Rose tells Isabelle to be careful. She says she knows Jacques comes from a good family and that she used to be good friends with a second cousin of his, but Jacques is in the army. If something happens, he’ll have to go to the front. Rose is afraid Isabelle will get hurt.

France and Germany go to war. Before Jacques is sent to the front, Isabelle wants to marry him. They get married without telling their families. A year later, Isabelle decides to go to the western front to be a nurse at the army hospital there. One of her patients is Charles Doret, who tells her Jacques is dead. Isabelle goes home to Paris. Charles is discharged because of a lack of hearing he’s suffering, and he takes Isabelle for a walk every day. He is the only one who knows Jacques and Isabelle were married. In 1917, Charles asks Isabelle to marry him. They get married, even though Isabelle knows she’ll never stop loving Jacques. In November of 1918, after the war has ended, Isabelle is sitting on the front porch of the house in which she and Charles live. A man in an army uniform comes limping up the road. Isabelle nearly faints when she sees it’s Jacques.

Jacques has been in a German prison camp this whole time. When he finds out Charles and Isabelle are married, he runs off feeling betrayed and hops on a boat to India. Charles, though it hurts him, vows to find Jacques for Isabelle. A few months later, Isabelle thinks they need to start over somewhere. Charles buys two tickets for America.

By 1924, Charles is mayor of Sweet Valley, California, and Isabelle is five months pregnant. They’re finally happy, but one day, while Isabelle is shopping in town, she sees Jacques. She sinks down onto a bench, and the town gossip, Evelyn Pearce (of course), rushes to her side to ask her what’s wrong. She says the man she just passed is Jack Fowler, a vagabond who lives on the other side of town. One day, Isabelle drives out to Jack’s ranch. She explains what happened back in France. Jack says he believes and forgives her, but he doesn’t love her anymore.

In 1952, Charles and Isabelle celebrate the birth of their granddaughter, Grace. After the party, they have an argument. Isabelle found out there was a zoning change that was approved, but Charles blocked it, all so Jack Fowler wouldn’t be able to sell his land to developers and make a ton of money. Charles says he’ll never stop hating Jack until Isabelle has forgotten about him. This is how their marriage has turned out. Jack’s ranch goes to ruins, and he and his wife, Anita, lose everything.

In 1960, Charles and Isabelle have a party at Secca Lake to celebrate their wedding anniversary. The Fowlers are there, on the other side of the lake. Jack and Charles end up having an argument that almost comes to blows. George Fowler is sixteen at the time, and he’s embarrassed for his grandfather. He’s tired of being poor, and he vows to make a success of his life.

Grace and George, 1971

George has worked hard, and by the time he’s twenty-seven, he has a successful computer company. He takes a break from the office one afternoon and goes to the beach, where he meets a pretty girl and asks her to dinner. When they meet that night and formally introduce themselves, they realize they’re supposed to be enemies since their grandfathers hate each other. They decide not to worry about that, and after one date, they’re in love.

Grace is actually engaged to another man, Everett Garrison III. She tells George that she isn’t really in love with him, but that their families have been pushing for the marriage. When Grace’s parents find out about George, they tell Grace they’ll disown her if she doesn’t stop seeing him. Grace doesn’t want that, so she stops speaking to George.

At her engagement party, Grace talks to her grandmother, Isabelle, who asks her if she really loves Everett. Grace says she’s not sure, and Isabelle tells her she should marry the man she loves. Not long later, George crashes the party. He finds Grace alone and gives her a ring. She says she’ll marry him. The next morning, Grace’s father is livid to find out that a computer company is buying out Doret Manufacturing’s stockholders and taking over. By the time he finds out George Fowler is behind it, Grace and George have already packed their bags. They hit the road, get married by a justice of the peace and hop on a plane to Paris.

Two years later, Lila is born. Jack Fowler and Isabelle Doret are the only family members who will come to the hospital to see her. Older and wiser now, they finally talk and both admit they never stopped loving each other.

In 1975, Grace takes Lila and goes to see her parents while George is on a business trip. When George finds out, he’s angry and tells her he doesn’t want Lila or Grace to have any contact with the Dorets. A few weeks later, Grace’s mother calls and says Isabelle has had a stroke and is in the hospital. George tells her she can’t go see her, and when Isabelle dies, Grace is angry with George for making her stay away.

George doesn’t want Grace to even go to the funeral, but she goes anyway, taking Lila and staying at her parents’ house for a few days. When the family gets back from the cemetery, there’s an envelope waiting for Grace. George is filing for divorce and suing for sole custody of Lila. Somehow, he wins. Grace is even denied visitation rights. When it’s all over, she decides staying in Sweet Valley is too painful if she can’t see her daughter, so she moves to France.

Fourteen years later, George is at a loss. A few months earlier, Lila was attacked by a boy named John, and since then, she’s been depressed. George knows she needs a mother, so for the first time ever, he calls Grace in France and asks her to come. She does, and Lila meets her mother for the first time. Grace and George fall in love all over again, and Grace dumps her boyfriend and remarries George.

Quotes:

Physically she was like a swan among more humble fowl – tall, willowy, and exceptionally pretty with fair skin and golden hair, whereas the Chardins were plain and dark, stocky and short.

Snobbery was alive and well in Lila’s family as early on as the 1800s.

A girl about Celeste’s age lounged on a velvet couch, stroking the head of a silky spaniel.

For no reason I can figure, this line made me think of Princess Mombi in Return to Oz.

The Cover: I think at the top left, that must be Jacques coming home from the war and making Isabelle faint. Next to them is Marc and Celeste in her maid uniform. Underneath them has to be Lili and the angry mob, and next to them is George, Grace and Lila, who is already wearing purple. Lined up on the right is probably Lili and Rose, then either Charles or Jacques, and then Lila.

You can read about the twins’ maternal family tree here.

Theodore, 1866-1888

Theodore Wakefield lives in England and is the son of the Earl of Wakefield. He feels lucky to be the second born son because he doesn’t want his brother James’ fate. James is being forced into an arranged marriage with a woman named Katarina. James shows no kindness to Katarina and Theodore accuses him of being too afraid to stand up to their father and refuse the marriage. The brothers argue, and James becomes angry and rides off on Theodore’s horse, Raven. James tries to jump the horse, but Raven veers away from the wall and throws James into it, killing him. After the funeral, the Earl tells Theodore he will take James’ place as heir and marry Katarina. Theodore refuses and decides to run away to America. Before he leaves, his mother slips into his pocket the family signet ring. Theodore hops a ship to America.

One day, Theodore sees a young blond woman jump overboard to save a little boy who has fallen into the water. She starts to go under and Theodore rescues her. They have dinner together later that night and Theodore gives Alice a small rose carved out of wood. He and Alice fall in love and plan to marry in America. After their arrival in the New World, however, Theodore is suspected of carrying typhus and is quarantined on Ward’s Island for weeks. When he is finally released, he has no idea what to do or how to find Alice. He buys a train ticket to Cleveland, figuring it’s as good a place as any to start his new lonely life.

In 1876, Theodore joins the circus as a horse trainer and becomes the Magnificent Theo W. Eight years later, he becomes close with one of the trapeze performers, Dancing Wind, a sixteen-year-old half-Indian girl. (By my count, Theodore is thirty-six at this point.) Dancing Wind is in love with Theodore, and it seems he may be starting to return the feeling, but a little girl named Jessamyn runs into the horse tent one day before the show starts and Theodore realizes the girl looks just like his lost love. Jessamyn says her mother is Swedish, and Theodore is excited at the prospect of meeting Alice again at the show that night.

Dancing Wind is crushed that he would forget about her so easily, and she wants nothing more than to make him notice her again. She tries to do a dangerous stunt on the trapeze that night, but she slips, ripping through the net and falling to the ground. Theo runs to her side and finally realizes he loves her. When autumn rolls around, Dancing Wind, now crippled and unable to perform, decides to leave the circus. Feeling that she trapped Theo into loving her, she decides to leave him, too. He sees her on the ground as the train is getting ready to leave, and offers to help her up. She tells him she’s not going, and he says he won’t either. They decide to get married in the spring and travel to California to find Dancing Wind’s tribe.

They never do get to California because Theo is worried the journey would be too much of a strain on Dancing Wind’s health. They settle in Nebraska and make a farm. Four years later, Dancing Wind is pregnant. She goes into labor on their wedding anniversary. The birth is very difficult, and after giving birth to twins and naming them James and Sarah, Dancing Wind dies.

Sarah, 1905-1907

The Wakefields have moved to Vista, California. In keeping with the idea that twins have to be complete opposites, Sarah is wild and James is serious. At sixteen years old, Sarah falls in love with Edward, one of the cherry pickers on the Wakefield farm. She brings him home for tea so her father and brother can meet him, but Theodore is cool and aloof. Sarah asks him later if he doesn’t like Edward, and Theodore says he would rather see her settled with someone who is able to keep her in the manner to which she has become accustomed. Someone like George LeMaitre, a boy from a rich family and someone Sarah isn’t interested in at all. She decides to keep seeing Edward in secret. As a present for her seventeenth birthday, Edward gives Sarah a ring.

An influenza epidemic sweeps the town, and James dies. Theodore tells Sarah she’s the only family he has left in the world, which makes Sarah feel guilty for lying about Edward all these months. She comes home from school one day to find her father has read her journal. He tells her she must stop seeing  Edward, or she can leave. That night, she packs a bag and goes to Edward. They run away to San Francisco and arrive on April 18, 1906. They plan to marry that day, but it’s still too early to find a justice of the peace. They check into a hotel, but pretty soon the ground starts to shake. When the earthquake is over, Sarah and Edward are trapped in their hotel room. They perform their own little wedding ceremony and call themselves married, then they have sex. They are eventually rescued, but then Edward goes back inside to help the other men. He dies when an aftershock throws him off a ledge.

Sarah goes home, and Theodore welcomes her back with open arms, happy she didn’t also die in the earthquake. A couple months later, Sarah finds out she is pregnant. This isn’t exactly welcome news, considering she and Edward never did get legally married. She tells her father, and he sends her away for the remainder of her pregnancy. He doesn’t want anyone in town to know about the illegitimate child. She goes to Mendocino, where Theodore has rented a house for her. She gives birth to a boy on New Year’s Day. She names him Edward, but calls him Teddy. She writes to her father, who comes to take her home. Sarah is surprised when he says only she will come home with him, not the baby. She refuses and decides to fend for herself. She’s worried about how Teddy will feel if he finds out his parents weren’t married, so she decides she will pretend to be his aunt, and he will never know she is his mother.

Ted, 1924-1937

Seventeen-year-old Ted and his “aunt” Sarah live in Chicago, and Ted gets a job working as a waiter at a jazz club. He befriends Tina Stark, the daughter of one of the musicians. Tina likes the way Ted talks about music and she encourages him to write about it. He gets published in the newspaper and starts thinking he’d like to write full time and not go to college. He tells Sarah his decision. She wants him to go to school as planned, and they have a fight. A few days later, Ted comes home to find Sarah holding an envelope. She says her father has died. Ted is confused, since he has always been told his grandfather died a long time ago. Sarah finally tells him the truth about his lineage. It’s too much for Ted to take and he wants to get out of the house. He’s been accepted to a college in Rosse, Ohio, so he packs his bags and leaves that night.

Ted thrives in college. He joins a fraternity and becomes good friends with Harry Watson. Harry has a pair of sixteen-year-old twin sisters and one of them, Samantha, is dying to meet Ted. Ted goes home with Harry for Christmas, and though he had intended on getting to know Samantha, he ends up falling for Amanda instead. Amanda doesn’t want to hurt Sam’s feelings, so over the next few months, they write letters to each other in secret. Ted decides to take a trip to Detroit and take Amanda to a jazz club, but when he gets there, it’s clear she never got his letter. Samantha tries to make out with him, and he has to tell her he’s in love with Amanda.

That night, Amanda wakes him up and tells him they need to go back to the jazz club, but when they get there, Ted gets arrested for running bootleg liquor. He spends the night in jail, and then the Feds let him go because they couldn’t make the charges stick. Ted gets in his car and heads for Chicago, not even stopping to get his things from the Watsons’ house. He is heartbroken at Amanda’s betrayal. It never occurs to him to think he might have been set up by the scorned twin. When he gets to his mother’s house, Ted decides to travel west and learn more about his grandparents.

Ted tracks down his grandmother’s tribe’s reservation in Oregon. When he goes to talk to the chief, there’s a young blond woman already there. After learning about Dancing Wind’s family, Ted goes outside and finds the blond woman waiting for him. She’s a reporter named Julia Marks, and she asks for Ted’s help in breaking the story she’s working on about the government reneging on promises they’d made to the Awaswan tribe. A man named Frank Foster has the only copy of the treaty, and Ted helps Julia get it from him so she can present it to Indian Affairs in Washington. A few days later, they’re both ready to leave Oregon. Ted doesn’t know what he’s going to do with his life now, but Julia has fallen in love with him and asks him to come with her to Washington. He agrees.

On the train, Ted tells Julia about his bad lineage, but Julia doesn’t care; she likes him for who he is. She tells him she likes him very much, but Ted tells her about Amanda, and explains he isn’t looking for romance. After a week in Washington together, though, Ted falls for her. They get married and move to New York, and in 1927, Julia tells Ted she’s pregnant. Their son, Robert, is born healthy, and while Julia is in the hospital, Ted reads in the paper that Samantha Watson has died giving birth to her daughter. He feels like a lucky man to have a healthy wife and baby.

By 1937, Julia has made a name for herself as a journalist, and she is asked to go on assignment to Germany. She stays two months and writes home often, and finally she writes to say she is coming home. Ted and Robert go to New Jersey to await her arrival on the Hindenburg. It bursts into flames and Julia dies.

Robert, 1943-1950

Not long after his sixteenth birthday, Robert goes to the army recruitment office and lies about his age so he can go fight. His father is unhappy about it, but gives him the Wakefield ring, which has been passed down through the generations, and tells him to come back safely. Robert is assigned to a ship in the South Pacific. The mission is to liberate a POW camp of nurses on Mindanao Island, and Robert will be listening for radio communications from their contact, a woman who goes by the name Pacific Star.

Pacific Star is Hannah Weiss, and she has been in the camp for a year and a half, under the guard of Japanese soldiers. Once a week, the guards let them outside to wash their clothes. One of the other prisoners distracts the guard while Hannah contacts Robert’s ship. After eighteen months of weekly communication, Robert and Hannah finally meet when the camp is liberated. A month later, Japan surrenders and the war is over. Hannah and Robert get married on Robert’s ship. They settle in Sweet Valley, California, where Hannah’s brother and his wife live, and there they eventually have a son, Ned. Ned and his cousin, Rachel Weiss, are born around the same time and grow up together.

Ned, Late 1960s

Rachel is sixteen, and is constantly being pestered by Hank Patman, who won’t take no for an answer. He only backs off when Ned comes around and threatens him. One day, Ned meets a migrant worker who is only sixteen but doesn’t go to school. Ned finds out the migrant workers aren’t allowed to go to Sweet Valley’s public schools and he wants to do something about it. He tries to get a petition together and have it endorsed by the student council, but Hank Patman refuses to get behind it.

Ned and Rachel go off to college, and a girl named Becky Foster is dying for Rachel to introduce her to Ned. Becky is a total square, but shows up in Rachel’s room one day dressed like a hippie, calling herself “Rainbow.” Ned finally notices her that night at an activist meeting, and he feels a connection with her when he finds out they’re both part Awaswan. After a date with him, Becky boasts to Rachel that she’s snagged Ned. When Rachel asks her why she wants Ned so bad anyway, Becky says she plans to graduate from law school, and it will sure be convenient to have a boyfriend who can help make sure she does so with honors. Rachel tries to tell Ned, but he doesn’t want to hear it. Then one day at a rally, Ned and Becky are handcuffed and taken to jail. Becky lets her true colors show and she tells Ned she was just using him to get ahead. When they get to the station, she tells the cops her father is Judge Foster, and they let her go. Ned feels like an idiot.

Senior year, Ned is on the beach one day when he sees a beautiful blond woman start to drown. He rescues her, but then Hank comes out of nowhere and pretends he doesn’t know Ned. Ned realizes there’s something between Hank and Alice and that Hank is treating him like a stranger in order to blow him off. Ned assumes Alice is just wonderful and is only dating Hank for fun because someone like her couldn’t possibly be serious about someone like Hank. Then he finds out they’re engaged, and he and Rachel think Hank is manipulating her the way Becky tried to manipulate Ned.

Depressed, Ned makes arrangements for the summer. After he graduates, he plans to travel to England and see the place where his great-great-grandfather came from. The night before he is to leave, Alice comes to his house, still wearing the wedding dress in which she was supposed to marry Hank. A few years later, Alice and Ned get married.

The Cover: I am not cool enough to have the edition with the stepback cover, so this image comes from The Closet.

I guess that’s the Hindenburg crashing over there, right next to Dancing Wind falling from the trapeze bar. Under that, Robert is chatting on his radio to Hannah, and under that, I guess that’s Ned and Alice looking all scared of the cops with their tear gas. Over on the right, only Theodore and Sarah seem important enough to share the limelight with Liz and Jessica.

Alice, 1866-1884

It’s 1866, and Alice Larson is sailing from Sweden to America when a storm knocks a little boy over the side of the ship. Alice jumps in after him, but then she starts to drown. A man named Theodore Wakefield, who is sailing from England, rescues her. Theodore and Alice spend all their time together for the rest of the journey, and plan to get married when they are both American citizens. When they arrive, they each go to have their medical exams and plan to meet outside the building afterward. Alice waits and waits, having no idea Theodore is suspected of having typhus and is being transported to a quarantine hospital. Alice’s aunt and uncle pick her up, and a week later, they move on to Minnesota. Alice is heartbroken.

Alice eventually marries George Johnson, and they have a son, Steven, who dies of scarlet fever. In 1877, Jessamyn and Elisabeth are born. The only way to tell them apart is by the mole on Elisabeth’s shoulder. In 1884, when the twins are seven, Alice and George take them to the circus, where Jessamyn runs off to see the horses. When her family finds her, she talks about the Magnificent Theo W., who showed her how to bridle a horse. Alice thinks it must be Theodore, and she sneaks out late that night to go back to the circus. She finds only an empty field. The circus has moved on.

Elisabeth and Jessamyn, 1893

The twins turn sixteen in 1893. Jessamyn is a daring tomboy, well on her way to becoming a suffragist. Elisabeth has a crush on Tom Wilkens, but so does Jessamyn. Boy, that sounds familiar. The Johnsons have a corn-husking bee in their barn to shuck the summer crop. Tom gets the red ear, which means he gets to kiss the girl of his choice. He chooses Elisabeth. The circus comes to town again, as it does every year, and Jessamyn dresses as a boy and sneaks off to see it. Jessamyn loves the circus, and when the bareback rider sees her ride, she says Jessamyn is good enough to be a circus star. The next day, her family wakes up to find a note from Jessamyn. She’s run off with the circus.

Jessamyn learned about horses from a nice old man named Peter Blue Cloud. After Jessamyn leaves, Elisabeth finds out Blue Cloud is dying and goes to see him. He asks for Jessamyn, and Elisabeth thinks she should try to track her sister down. Her parents forbid her to go, so Elisabeth sneaks out and hops a train. She manages to find the circus train surprisingly quickly, and tells Jessamyn about Blue Cloud. Jessamyn says she’ll go home with Elisabeth after the next day’s show. Before they leave, Elisabeth asks if she can ride Jessamyn’s horse around the ring. She gets thrown from the horse and dies. Jessamyn quits the circus and goes home to bury her sister.

Jessamyn, 1900-1908

Jessamyn moves to San Francisco and by 1900, is successfully managing a hotel. In 1905, Taylor Watson, who runs the Watson Motor Company, proposes to her, but she’s not sure she loves him. He introduces her to Bruce Farber, who is going to race one of Taylor’s cars to gain publicity for the company. A year later, she’s engaged to Taylor and having an affair with Bruce. She is unable to make up her mind until the earthquake hits and Bruce proves himself to be a coward. Taylor and Bruce are in the hotel and Taylor becomes trapped by fire. Bruce leaves him to die. They both manage to make it out alive, but Bruce’s cowardice shows Jessamyn the kind of man he really is. She marries Taylor and they move to Michigan. Two years later, Jessamyn gives birth to twin girls, Amanda and Samantha.

Amanda and Samantha, 1920-1935

Amanda wants to be a writer and Samantha wants to be an actress. When she’s twelve years old, Samantha cuts her hair into a bob and tries to get Amanda to do the same. In 1925, their brother, Harry, writes home from college and tells his family all about his roommate, Ted Wakefield. He’s sent a picture along, and the twins are both impressed with Ted’s looks. Amanda has a steady boyfriend named Geoff, so she’s not really interested in competing with Samantha for Ted’s affection. Ted comes home with Harry at Christmas and falls in love with Amanda, and even though Amanda tells herself she shouldn’t hurt Samantha or Geoff, she makes out with Ted. Ted leaves the next morning, and Amanda vows to forget about him and not tell anyone about their kiss. But Ted writes her a letter and she writes back, and by March, she’s in love with Ted and broken up with Geoff. She still can’t bear to tell Samantha what’s going on. Samantha finds a letter to Amanda from Ted in the mailbox and steams it open. She’s furious to find that the two of them have been carrying on a secret romance. She reseals the letter and puts it back in the mailbox. Ted is coming home with Harry over spring break, and Samantha is determined that either she will make him hers, or else no one can have him. Scary.

Samantha intercepts another letter and learns Ted will be making a quick stop in Detroit that Friday and wants to take Amanda to a jazz club. Samantha burns the letter, and then vandalizes the newspaper office at school, ensuring Amanda will have to stay late to help clean up. When Ted arrives, Samantha suggests they go get Amanda, but Samantha directs him to Overlook Valley, the makeout spot, instead of to the school. She starts trying to kiss him, but he tells her he’s in love with Amanda. Samantha gets out of the car and walks away.

There’s a guy named Kevin Hughes who’s some kind of big deal at The Cellar Door, the local speakeasy. He’s always lusted after Samantha, so after she leaves Ted, Samantha walks all the way from Overlook Valley to the speakeasy and convinces Kevin to help her with her revenge plan. That night, after Amanda has gone to sleep, Samantha dresses in the clothes she was wearing and goes to the guest bedroom to wake Ted. Pretending to be Amanda, she tells him a friend of his who plays music at the jazz club is in trouble and needs him for something. When they get to the club, the police are there and they ask Ted to open his trunk, which is full of alcohol. The cops thank “Amanda” for bringing them the man who’s been supplying the area with liquor. The cops arrest Ted, and he gets hauled off thinking Amanda set him up.

When Amanda finds out Ted was arrested, she goes to the police station to find out what happened. The cops tell her he was let go earlier, but that he had said he was heartbroken because his girl had set him up. Amanda figures out that it must have all been Samantha’s doing. She goes home to confront her. Samantha denies everything at first, but then says she was only trying to even the score. The twins don’t speak to each other for the next two months, and then Samantha takes off for Hollywood after high school graduation. She gets famous pretty quickly, and just a few months later, she marries a man named Jack Lewis. Amanda opts to stay in Detroit while the rest of the family goes to Hollywood for the wedding. One day, Amanda reads in the paper that Samantha is pregnant.

Months later, Samantha’s doctor in California calls the Watsons and says Samantha isn’t doing well with the birth of her child and will probably die. Amanda races to Hollywood and gets to the hospital just in time to tell her twin she loves her and promise to help Jack take care of the baby, Marjorie.

In 1935, Jack, Amanda and Marjorie are all living in Sweet Valley, but Jack has been offered a job in France. Amanda is heartsick at losing Marjorie, but knows the child needs to stay with her father. Jack offers to let Amanda come with them, but she doesn’t want to leave her job teaching at Sweet Valley High (one of her students is a jokester named Walter Egbert).

Marjorie, 1940-1949

France has been invaded by the Germans and it’s a scary place to be during the war, but Marjorie doesn’t want to go back to America. In 1941, her father tells her he’s sending her home to Aunt Amanda, but he will be staying in France. The day before she’s supposed to leave is the day the Americans enter the war. A friend of her father’s tells her she is now an enemy to the Germans and must lay low. He walks her home, and they find the house has been ransacked and Jack is missing. Another family friend takes Marjorie to a hiding place near a vineyard, where she will be sharing the cellar with a Jewish girl named Sophy. Sophy’s parents were captured, but her brother, Jacques, works with the French Resistance.

About a year later, Jacques visits them in the cellar to ask Marjorie if she wants to help the Resistance. They need someone to transmit messages to Britain and America. She learns Morse code and leaves the cellar. One night, she gets stopped by some soldiers, but she hands them her falsified identification papers and puts on a good act. They let her go, and Marjorie meets up with Jacques, who saw the whole thing and was worried about her. They kiss, and then fall in love.

Some time later, Marjorie receives a message saying Sophy has been arrested and the enemy is looking for Marjorie. It also says Jack Lewis is suspected of getting arrested on purpose so he could work from inside the POW camp. Marjorie and Jacques come up with a plan. Jacques speaks to an old classmate of his named Pierre who collaborates with the Germans. He convinces Pierre that the Germans would probably be willing to let Sophy go if he can hand over Marjorie. After all, Sophy is “just a Jew,” and the Germans think Marjorie can give them information about her father’s work. Pierre gets papers for Sophy and arranges for her to get to Spain. The plan is to make Pierre think Jacques will turn Marjorie over at the train station. Sophy gets her papers and gets on the train, and Pierre takes Marjorie’s arm. Then a Resistance fighter rams a baggage cart into Pierre and Marjorie runs for the train. She hops on as it starts moving, but Jacques is not behind her. German soldiers and Resistance fighters swarm the station platform and start shooting. As the train pulls away, Marjorie sees Jacques lying in a pool of blood.

Marjorie and Sophy cry together, and Sophy says Marjorie is her only family now. Marjorie is sad to tell her that she can’t travel to Spain without papers, and that she and Jacques had arranged with another Resistance member to have the train slow down twenty kilometers outside their village so they could jump off. Sophy leaves the compartment and closes the door, jamming it with a hairpin. She tells Marjorie to take her papers, since she and Marjorie look so much alike, and go home to America. Sophy wants to stay in France and work with the Resistance. She, instead of Marjorie, jumps off the train when it slows.

Marjorie goes home to Sweet Valley, and in 1949, her father walks her down the aisle when she marries Charles Robertson.

Alice Robertson, 1962-1969

After watching news coverage of John Glenn’s orbit around Earth, Marjorie tells her daughters, Nancy, Alice and Laura, about their family history. Alice draws a family tree, but leaves space at the bottom so she can fill it up with her own family when she gets older.

Alice goes off to college, where she spends most of her time drawing and fending off Hank Patman’s advances. Alice and her roommate, Jenny, attend a sit-in after a professor is fired for being too vocal about civil rights. The administration cuts off all deliveries to the building in an attempt to starve the students out, but Hank Patman saves the day by making a food drop from a helicopter. Alice changes her mind about Hank and agrees to go out with him. After dating for most of a semester during which Hank starts to look and act like a hippie, Hank proposes to Alice and she accepts.

At a party on the beach, Alice sees Hank chatting up another woman. She confronts him and they have a fight, then Hank goes back to the party to “groove on some mellower people.” Angry, Alice dives into the ocean, but she gets caught in an undertow and starts to drown. A man named Ned Wakefield rescues her. Alice feels like she knows him, even though she’s never met him. After that, she runs into Ned a lot on campus. He asks her out, and looks sad when she shows him her ring and says she’s engaged to Hank Patman. A few days before the wedding, Ned calls her just to say he wishes her the best and he’ll never forget her.

The day of the wedding, Jenny, Laura and Nancy are helping Alice get ready in the guest house at the Patman mansion. Jenny says she sees Hank outside the window and Alice opens it to have a look. She hears Hank talking to some of his frat buddies, making fun of Alice’s hippie friends and telling them the helicopter food drop was a scheme to make himself popular. Alice tells the other girls to get Hank and tell him she wants to talk to him. She tells him she can’t marry him, then runs away from the mansion and into the arms of Ned Wakefield.

Quotes:

But if the rumors going around Hollywood are right, the article went on, Miss Watson won’t be fitting into her perfect size-six dress for much longer.

Just so you know, the entire family is perfect and always has been.

The Number 137:

Samantha: But I really don’t want to have this conversation for the hundred and thirty-seventh time.

The Cover: Well, let’s see. It looks like over on the left near the ships, that must be Alice Larson and Theodore looking like they’re posing for the cover of a Harlequin romance. Then we’ve got Jessamyn on a horse, right next to a train station I’m going to guess is supposed to be in France. Or maybe it’s the train Elisabeth hopped when she went to find Jessamyn. Then there’s Samantha at the bottom in her flapper outfit, looking all seductive for Ted. Underneath Alice and Theodore appears to be Hank Patman’s red Mustang. I’m thinking the ladies lining the right side are Alice Larson, Jessamyn, Alice Robertson and Jessica, though I really have no idea.