Description
Good dust jacket, shows wear, clipped corners, wear at the head and foot of spine and edges of front cover, rub on spine and cover. The Very Good+ binding is pictorial cloth over boards, black lettering on front cover and spine, light wear at corners and the head and foot of the spine. Pictorial endpapers. The binding is tight and pages are clean. The illustrations are great with four full color plates and black-and-white line drawings in the text by Philip Gough.
About the book: (from the dust jacket)
The day that Barlasch is billeted on the Sebastian household 1n Dantzig significant for all the actors in this gripping is drama of love and war. It was on that day that Napoleon rode through on his way to conquer Russia, sweeping along in his train young Désirée Sebastian’s husband Charles Darragon, and her sister’s betrothed. Their father, the silent and mysterious Antoine Sebastian, implacable intriguer against Napoleon, is forced to flee the City and in this 1S aided by Charles’s English cousin, and by Barlasch, loyal veteran of Napoleon’s Old Guard.
These two men, on opposing sides in the conflict, one young and well-born, one old, of peasant stock, befriend Désirée through all the deceptions and hardships and dangers that war, siege, frost and famine bring in their wake.
Henry Seton Merriman, himself a great traveler, had a marvelous gift for creating vivid pictures of foreign places–pictures charged with atmosphere and feeling. Désirée’s sleigh journey across the frozen plains of Poland, her secret visit to the waterfront, Barlasch in Moscow, burdened with loot, the corpse-strewn track of the retreat…. Such unforgettable scenes have inspired superb illustrations by Philip Gough.
