2025 Historical Novel Review for the Historical Novel Society

Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure

Written by Rhys Bowen
Review by Constance Emmett

Mrs. Ellie Endicott, long settled in a loveless marriage, lives in the comfort of an English village with rounds of church work and gardening. One evening in 1938 her husband announces that Ellie must leave to make room for a young and pregnant future Mrs. Endicott. Stunned, Ellie soon makes the first decision in her new life – to go to the south of France despite the threat of war.

She then decides two more things – to negotiate a lucrative divorce settlement and take two wounded friends with her: Mavis, her housekeeper and victim of domestic abuse; and the formidable Dora, an elderly neighbor begging to go despite a terminal illness. Audaciously, she steals her husband’s Bentley to drive them all to Provence. The car breaks down in a small fishing village in the middle of the beautiful Calanques where they settle.

The novel is indeed a splendid adventure as the three women blossom and enjoy the beautiful setting of their new lives, vividly described. The storyline of a troubled pregnant girl, whom Ellie rescues, disrupts the flow and leads nowhere. As the story moves into 1942-1944, the adventure becomes less splendid and more hair-raising, especially after German troops move into the village. The tone changes appropriately, particularly in the descriptions of the villagers’ interactions with the Germans and with each other as their hardships deepen, causing betrayals and retaliations. However, the epilogue reads as a hasty afterthought, one in which the main characters seem without trauma from their war experiences or memory of those loved who perished, which does not serve the novel well.