I finally did it! It only took me ten years, but I finally finished the Wideacre saga! And I didn’t need to reread any of the prior novels to do it!
And I have even better news! I don’t think I need to point out any possible trigger warnings for Meridon! The earlier novels, Wideacre and The Favored Child, both had trigger warnings galore: incest, domestic violence, rape, murder, and gaslighting.
I’m not saying that, because none of the above triggery actions occur in Meridon (well, maybe some gaslighting), that Meridon is a better book than the others; nor is it a book that is filled with Super Happy Fun Times. But at least no one fucks their sister in this one.
Meridon is the name of the lead character and our narrator. At the time we meet her, she is fifteen, and has been living with her Da, her stepmother Zima, and her sister Dandy. They are essentially “gypsies” or “travelers” – more “travelers,” as this particular family does not seem to be of Romany descent. Additionally, Meridon was adopted; her “ma” died years ago, and her Da keeps her on because he promised her ma he wouldn’t let her go without making sure she has a way of making a living or a husband.
(Still Georgian England, after all.)
They make their living going town to town, fair to fair. Da breaks and sells horses and ponies, and spends the income on drink and gambling. Dandy flirts with gentlemen for spending coin and steals rabbits for food. Meridon breaks her body breaking the horses her Da finds, and at night, she dreams of Wide.
I shut my eyes tight and wished myself far away. Far away from the aches in my body and from the dread and fear in my mind. From my disgust at my father and my hatred of Zima. From my helpless impotent love for Dandy and my misery at my own hopeless, dirty, poverty-stricken existence.
I shut my eyes tight and thought of myself as the copper-headed daughter of the squire who owned Wide. I thought of the trees reflected in the waters of the trout river. I thought of the house and the roses growing so creamy and sweet in the gardens outside the house. As I drifted into sleep I willed myself to see the dining room with the fire flickering in the hearth and the pointy flames of the candles reflected in the great mahogany table, and the servants in livery bringing in dish after dish of food. My eternally hungry body ached at the thought of all those rich, creamy dishes. But as I fell asleep, I was smiling.
[p. 9]
What Meridon does not know is that she is actually Sarah Lacey, the daughter of Julia and Richard Lacey, and the granddaughter of Beatrice Lacey, daughter of Wideacre. The dreams are actually the land calling its daughter back to it.
One day, a man named Robert Gower watches Meridon work with one of her father’s new ponies, and Robert offers to buy the pony and take Meridon off of Da’s hands. Da takes the offer, but Meridon insists that Dandy go with her as well. Gower accepts the counter-offer, but grudgingly.
Gower operates a traveling equestrian show – he and his son perform tricks on horses, as in a circus. And Gower recognizes that Meridon has an amazing skill with horses, and wants to add her to the troupe. He also has a desire to add a trapeze act to his circus, and he puts Dandy to work learning that skill.
He also tried to get Meridon to learn the trapeze, but she has an incredible fear of heights and can barely climb the ladder. She practices once on a swing that’s barely off the ground and has a terrible fall – after which Gower agrees she can stick to the horses.
The troupe practices all winter at Gower’s house. Gower and Meridon have a true respect for each other – they each recognize the hard work they put into their roles. Dandy is as big a flirt as ever. Her only demand from Gower is to leave his son, Jack, alone. But sure enough, Dandy seduces Jack and they sneak around a lot.
One night, they’re performing, and just before Dandy and Jack go on for the trapeze act, Meridon has a sense of foreboding. She asks Dandy what’s going on, because she’s acting like she’s got a big secret, and sure enough –
“It’s as I said it would be. I’ve caught Jack and I’m going to tell his Da. I’m breeding his child so there’ll be a grandson Gower to inherit all this! And I’ll be his Ma. I told you I’d win it all, and I have done! I’ve caught him now and he’ll not get away. I’ll tell him after the show.”
[p. 211]
What Dandy didn’t realize was that Jack was within hearing of that conversation. And I don’t know if any of you have seen a trapeze act, but in a trapeze act with two people, one person typically catches the other person as they go flying off the bar. Jack is that person in this particular trapeze act. And when Dandy goes flying to Jack in the show, he catches her – and then promptly flings her into the back wall of the barn where they’re performing, head-first. She dies instantly.
Without another word to Gower, Meridon packs up her meager belongings and takes her horse, and off she goes in search of Wide. After a few days of rambling, exhausted, she is practically pulled there by some supernatural force (I mean, not explicitly, but – it certainly feels like it). She traverses the estate that is recognizable from her dreams, and is met by a farmer, demanding to know who she is. No longer wanting to be known as Meridon, wishing to cut all ties to her past, she identifies herself with a name from her subconscious: Sarah Lacey.
After recuperating, Sarah meets James Fortescue, who was engaged to marry Julia Lacey (before her brother, Richard, raped her, got her pregnant, and forced her to marry him – as told in The Favored Child). James has been searching for Sarah ever since she was a baby, but he lost the trail of her when her Ma (the gypsy woman Julia gave Sarah to) died. He has also managed the Wideacre estate to Julia’s wishes, which created a village profit-sharing cooperative, so all of the farmers and tradesmen in Acre share in the profits of the estate, while Sarah has the actual house and stables and those related acres where she could live.
Sarah learns that she is now rich – richer beyond her wildest dreams. And she is not entirely sold on this profit-sharing … scheme. Her new friend in Acre, Will Tyacke, knew her mother and Richard, and tries to tell Sarah why Julia wanted to end the squires, and give the land back to the people, and he hopes that Sarah’s past will engender her to that ideal:
“For [Julia] did not end the squires, but here you are, a squire who knows what it is to be poor. It is different for you, because you were not bred to it. You’ve seen both sides. You’ve not been trained in Quality ways, you’ve not learned to look away when you see beggars. Your heart is not hard in the way they learn […] You would not make their lives hard for them if you could choose.”
I thought about that as I rode. And I knew it was not so. Nothing in my life had taught me tenderness or charity. Nothing had taught me to share, to think of others […] Will’s belief that my knowing the underside of a cruel and greedy world would make me gentle could not have been more wrong.
[…] “No one ever gave me a damned thing. Every penny I saw I worked for. Every crust I ate I earned. I don’t think I’m the squire you hoped for, Will Tyacke. I don’t think I’m capable of gentry charity. I’ve been poor myself, and I hate being poor, and I don’t care for poor dirty people. If I’m rich now, I’ll stay that way. I don’t ever want to be poor again.”
[p. 264-266]
Oops. Guess she isn’t as sympathetic as you’d hoped, Will.
Sarah meets her neighbor, Lord Peregrine (“Perry”) Havering one day. He is dead drunk in the middle of the morning, but he is charming and easy to talk to. She brings him back to his estate, which neighbors Wideacre. There she meets his mother, Lady Clara, who offers to take Sarah under her wing and teach her the ways of the Quality. Lady Clara is also a greedy opportunist who shares Sarah’s views of the profit-sharing going on in Acre – in other words, she’s against them. Lady Clara starts that day manipulating Sarah into marrying Perry so the Haverings control both estates.
Sarah has no problem marrying Perry – he’s funny, he’s not there all the time, and he isn’t angry at the fact that Sarah never wants to be touched. It’s a marriage of convenience and it suits both of them perfectly.
The Haverings and Sarah go to London for the season and Perry descends completely into drinking and gambling. He starts asking Sarah for money to pay his debts; then he stops asking. James Fortescue stops by to give Sarah the dividends from Wideacre – 33,000 pounds worth. Perry steals them out of Sarah’s secret dresser drawer and manages to win them back plus an additional £22,000 … because he needed to pay for Lady Clara’s diamonds, which he had pawned earlier in the season.
And then Sarah comes down with typhus fever. She is near death, and Lady Clara brings Perry and a priest so Perry and Sarah can be married before she dies – because if Sarah dies without providing heirs, Wideacre stays with the Haverings as part of Sarah’s dowry.
But Sarah doesn’t die – she recovers from typhus. And she immediately sends for James Fortescue and a lawyer to see what her options are. And because this series takes place in late Georgian England, her options are nonexistent.
“I am sorry for this confusion during your illness,” [the lawyer] said formally. “But once you put your name to the marriage register the deed was done.”
I managed a smile, my hard-eyed beggar-girl smile. “I understand,” I said. “And I should have been on my guard. I’d lived among thieves all my life, Mr. Penkiss. I should have known I was among them still.”
[p. 481]
And it takes almost dying and recognizing Quality for thieves to turn Sarah Lacey into a socialist. (Much like living through two major recession/depressions and never having any job prospects have turned Millennials and Gen Z’ers into the socialists their ancestors/Boomers have always railed against.)
[Will Tyacke] had tried to keep Wideacre safe as one of the few places, one of the very few, where the wealth of the land could go to those who earned it. Where people could work and earn the full benefits of their work — not what was left after the squire had taken his cut, and the merchant, and the parson. I had been on the side of the squires and the merchants and the parsons then. I was not now. Since then I had been as close to death as most people ever get, and I had felt someone take my sweating hand and sign away my land for me. I would never again believe that some people deserved higher wages or finer lives than others. We all had needs. We all sought their satisfaction. Some people were clever rogues, they managed to get a little more — that was all the difference there ever was.
[p. 489-490]
Or, if you’re a clever rogue doing business during a fucking pandemic, you could manage to get billions more and not pay a red cent in taxes the following year.
The final straw for Sarah is when Perry steals the deeds to Wideacre and gambles the estate away, because of course he does. Sarah enlists the help of Will Tyacke, with whom she’s since reconciled, and she disguises herself as a wealthy landowner and then uses all her skills of a con artist and cardsharp to win her land back – through Will.
She signs the deed to Wideacre and the village over to Will, who turns it into the cooperative her mother had dreamed of. She drops the use of “Sarah Lacey” and goes back to being “Meridon.” She lives with Will in the village and is finally truly happy.
So, I’m slightly sorry that I pretty much told y’all how this book ends, but after the crazy goings-on and violence in Wideacre and The Favored Child I’m just so happy that the worst thing that happens to Meridon/Sarah is that she almost dies and gets her land stolen away. Progress? Progress!
I also enjoyed reading about a baby Democratic Socialist in Georgian England.
I’m glad I finished the series. I’m very glad to put the whole thing behind me. I am glad that Meridon broke the cycle of violence that Beatrice started back in Wideacre, and I’m glad I feel I can move on.
I’m not sure I’d recommend reading Meridon, since it’s the third book in the series, and I definitely do not recommend reading Wideacre unless you’re absolutely prepared for it … so there you go.
The Guster Reading Challenge Song for Meridon is “Either Way” off of Lost and Gone Forever, for “reading a book I’d been on the fence about.” Yeah, that’s extremely accurate. The song is amazing, though.
Grade for Meridon: 2 stars
That's What She Read 