"I didn't know their standards had changed," Anita Stansfield says in her press release regarding her latest novel, The Captain of Her Heart. (Paraphrased.) She'd submitted the book to her regular publisher, Covenant, but was surprised when they turned it down. She ended up forming her own company and publishing it herself. She's written novels before where main characters have sexual relations outside of marriage and repent afterwards which Covenant has published, so why should this one be any different? My curiosity got the better of me and I checked the book out from the library.

The book itself is certainly much, much tamer than most national market offerings. It's so tame that if I hadn't known it was coming, I wouldn't have recognized the scene where the two lovers fall to their passions as anything but another kissing scene. There is nothing explicitly portrayed anywhere in the book.

But maybe that's the problem. The repentance process isn't explicitly portrayed, either. Sure, the characters live at the time of the American Revolution, so they aren't LDS and don't have quite the same moral expectations as readers of the book would. And they don't have bishops to go talk to afterward. But for us to see that their repentance is real, there has to be more than just a few paragraphs explaining how sorry they are. There are a few paragraphs where they do, in fact, feel sorry for their actions:

He'd waited for her to grow up, but he'd still taken something from her that he was not entitled to have until he had given her his name. He pressed his face into her hair, wondering where to begin to make something like this right-- if such a thing was even possible.

"Kyrah," he murmured, and she immediately turned toward him, clutching his shirt into her fists. "I'm so sorry, Kyrah. I don't know what happened. I just-- Oh, Kyrah. What have I done? We'll make it right--We'll be married before you know it"

"Hush," she whispered. "It's done and we can't undo it. Just promise me you'll always be here. Promise me you'll never leave me, Ritcherd, never! Promise me, and everything will be all right." (133)

Past this, you can almost hear the "oh, well" as they resume their lives in the paragraphs that follow. They go on with their lives and their love and the story would in many ways play out the same way. They still receive spiritual promptings that eventually lead them out of danger and into each other's arms. Anita Stansfield is usually so good at portraying the Spirit and infusing wisdom into her stories, I?m surprised that she felt she could gloss over the transgression here the way that she did.

Well, all right, there are a few consequences of their behavior. The main one is that Kyrah becomes pregnant as a result of their encounter. But she doesn't find that out until later. Within hours of their passion, Kyrah is framed for robbery by Ritcherd's mother, who doesn't want her wealthy son marrying a poor girl, and Kyrah is deported to the colonies in America. (Until now, they've been in England; not that it matters much otherwise.) As the uncertain weeks apart crawl by, Kyrah comes to recognize her condition. But the baby growing inside her simply becomes a tangible reminder of their love, not something ill- timed or that brings her shame. She does end up later marrying an abusive jerk because he can provide a home for her and her baby, but other than that, the consequences she experiences as an unwed mother at the time of the Revolution aren't what you might expect. She just sells the diamond earrings that Ritcherd gave her (did I mention that Ritcherd is incredibly wealthy?), buys a big cloak to cover her figure, and lives for a few months from the proceeds. That doesn't sound like suffering to me. Sure, she worries from time to time what will become of her and her baby, but that's just idle talk. We all know that she also has a huge diamond necklace that Ritcherd gave her that she can sell, which will certainly finance her life for several months if not years. No one she meets seems to have a problem with her being an unwed mother. She certainly is not suffering any realistic consequences. Even when she marries the jerk instead of selling her necklace in order to survive (which doesn't make much sense for her to do, and it's not the only time in the story that she makes dumb choices that seem to come from nowhere), and he beats her and then leaves her, he's conveniently gone for several months but has left her a place to stay and food to eat. So even then, her needs are cared for.

Then Ritcherd comes and saves the day, and although he is a bit surprised to learn that he's a father, there is no indication that their situation will be anything but happy, except maybe for the beady-eyed villains who would tear them apart. If they had already been married, the story would have played out largely the same except for the fact that Kyrah couldn't have married the jerk that beat her up. That's a big plot twist (if not a very good one), but the main thing that I noticed is that the story feels the same, regardless. They don't feel any differently toward each other after their romp; they still love and trust each other like they always have. Kyrah doesn't feel any more shame or shock over her condition than she would have if the child had been conceived within the bonds of marriage. She loves the baby immediately and is grateful to have a part of Ritcherd with her in this way. They continue to receive promptings from the Spirit regarding how to act in various situations, and they continually call on God in prayer as if there is nothing standing between them and Him. The repentance really boils down to an "oops," and the pregnancy becomes just another plot twist. The characters say it was wrong of them to do, but the feel of the story and the consequences they face do nothing to show that there was really anything wrong about it.

Besides the repentance issues and the wooden plotting, there's also the fact that Ritcherd and Kyrah have known each other and been best friends since childhood, when she was seven and he was thirteen. Ritcherd has always loved her, but has always had to wait for her to grow up. I don't know about you, but the idea of having my seven-year-old daughter (if I had one) run around with a thirteen-year-old boy gives me the willies. Letting my ten-year-old daughter run around with a sixteen-year-old boy is even worse.

Nevertheless, diehard Stansfield fans will probably be satisfied with the minimal lip service paid to repentance and won't mind the other problems. They'll be glad to find a book where the characters at least say they're sorry for their little fling. That's a lot more than most characters in most books or movies do. But if you aren't a Stansfield fan already, this book probably won't do anything to persuade you to become one. I think that she can, and should, do better.

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Katie Parker
April 28, 2004