Sylvia's Lovers

Gaskell's powerfully moving novel, "Sylvia's Lovers," is set in the 1790's in an English seaside town where a young woman is caught between the attractions of two very different men. With England at war with France, press-gangs wreak havoc by seizing young men for service. One of their victims, Charley Kinraid, whose charm and cheerfulness has captured the heart of Sylvia Robson. But Sylvia's devoted cousin, Philip Hepburn, hopes to marry her himself, and in order to protect that outcome, deliberately withholds crucial information that ends with devastating consequences.