A Norwegian farmer's daughter of great beauty is found in the land of the midnight sun by an English baronet on a yachting cruise, marries him, and is brought home to a London society that decides at once what is to be done about her. Corelli outsold Wells, Kipling and Conan Doyle combined and was Queen Victoria's favorite novelist. The opening pages of Arctic summer are the best writing in the book. Fifty-eight plates by painters including Johan Christian Dahl and Caspar David Friedrich carry the northern light and snow of Thelma's Norway into the London drawing rooms where she must learn to live.
