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Book Review: The Forgotten Daughter
Sep. 17th, 2024 08:27 amOn Friday, we had an advising conference in the morning in Indianapolis (why a three-hour conference a two hour round trip from where we work? Ours is not to reason why), and afterwards I skipped merrily across town to the Indiana State Library to plunder their Newbery books for Caroline Snedeker’s The Forgotten Daughter.
The previous Snedeker books I’ve read have all taken place in America in about 1820, so I was briefly startled to realize that this book takes place in ancient Rome. (It has beautiful illustrations by Dorothy Lathrop.) Our heroine, Chloe, is the daughter of another Chloe who was kidnapped from the island of Lesbos by a Roman centurion, but he was SO impressed by the first Chloe’s bravery that he married her… only to abandon her at his country estate and take another wife in Rome!
The first Chloe died in childbirth, leaving our Chloe as a slave on her father’s estate, where she is raised mostly by her mother’s friend Melissa, who was also kidnapped from Lesbos. She therefore entertains Chloe with whatever she can remember from the poems of Psappha (Sappho), the plays of Euripides, snatches of Pindar, etc. etc., which fascinates the young gentleman from the neighboring estate when he meets Chloe. A slave girl who can compare his riding skills with those of Hippolytus? For Chloe has of course sneaked off to watch him ride…
This is in short a story of gentility in straitened circumstances, and a young girl of good breeding who returns to her rightful class by winning the heart and hand of a gentleman of appropriate status.
In this case, through a plot twist worthy of an ancient Roman comedy, it turns out that Chloe’s father didn’t forget her; he never knew she existed! His family, appalled that he had married some nobody from Lesbos, imprisoned him in Rome and sent messengers to the first Chloe that he had married someone else, thus hastening her decline. After she died, fearing for baby Chloe’s life, Melissa told the steward that the child had been born dead. Chloe’s father didn’t learn otherwise until years later, when the plague forced him to leave Rome for the estate he had shunned, conveniently just in time to arrange the marriage between his daughter Chloe and her Roman beloved.
The previous Snedeker books I’ve read have all taken place in America in about 1820, so I was briefly startled to realize that this book takes place in ancient Rome. (It has beautiful illustrations by Dorothy Lathrop.) Our heroine, Chloe, is the daughter of another Chloe who was kidnapped from the island of Lesbos by a Roman centurion, but he was SO impressed by the first Chloe’s bravery that he married her… only to abandon her at his country estate and take another wife in Rome!
The first Chloe died in childbirth, leaving our Chloe as a slave on her father’s estate, where she is raised mostly by her mother’s friend Melissa, who was also kidnapped from Lesbos. She therefore entertains Chloe with whatever she can remember from the poems of Psappha (Sappho), the plays of Euripides, snatches of Pindar, etc. etc., which fascinates the young gentleman from the neighboring estate when he meets Chloe. A slave girl who can compare his riding skills with those of Hippolytus? For Chloe has of course sneaked off to watch him ride…
This is in short a story of gentility in straitened circumstances, and a young girl of good breeding who returns to her rightful class by winning the heart and hand of a gentleman of appropriate status.
In this case, through a plot twist worthy of an ancient Roman comedy, it turns out that Chloe’s father didn’t forget her; he never knew she existed! His family, appalled that he had married some nobody from Lesbos, imprisoned him in Rome and sent messengers to the first Chloe that he had married someone else, thus hastening her decline. After she died, fearing for baby Chloe’s life, Melissa told the steward that the child had been born dead. Chloe’s father didn’t learn otherwise until years later, when the plague forced him to leave Rome for the estate he had shunned, conveniently just in time to arrange the marriage between his daughter Chloe and her Roman beloved.
