Review: A Desperate Fortune

Cover Summary:

For nearly 300 years, the mysterious journal of Jacobite exile Mary Dundas has lain unread — its secrets safe from prying eyes. Now, amateur codebreaker Sara Thomas has been hired by a once-famous historian to crack the journal's cipher. But when she arrives in Paris, Sara finds herself besieged by complications from all sides: the journal's reclusive owner, her charming Parisian neighbor, and Mary, whose journal doesn't hold the secrets Sara expects. 

It turns out that Mary Dundas wasn’t keeping a record of everyday life, but a first-hand account of her part in a dangerous intrigue. In the first wintry months of 1732, with a scandal gaining steam in London, driving many into bankruptcy and ruin, the man accused of being at its center is concealed among the Jacobites in Paris, with Mary posing as his sister to aid his disguise. 

When their location is betrayed, they’re forced to put a desperate plan in action, heading south along the road to Rome, protected by the enigmatic Highlander Hugh MacPherson.
As Mary's tale grows more and more dire, Sara, too, must carefully choose which turning to take... to find the road that will lead her safely home.

A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley satisfies in three genres at once.

As a historical novel, it is meticulously detailed without losing any of its suspense. Take this description of a rifle: “These do place a whirling action upon the bullet so it spins upon its axis in its flight … I have heard tell of these, but never seen one” (ch. 23, p. 45). If Samuel Pepys was ever involved in a political intrigue, isn’t this exactly what he’d sound like?

As a romance, the story might surprise readers who are not too familiar with the genre, and maybe even some who are. Sara Thomas’ romance in the modern sections is easy to predict (although no less charming), but the identity of Mary’s love interest is up in the air at least until halfway through the book. For a story about code breaking, it’s only fitting that the characters learn to look beneath each other’s surface for qualities that inspire love.

Finally, this is a story about autism. Sara, the code breaker who deciphers Mary’s diary, has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. 

Although there are a few heavy-handed moments – “I’d always been puzzled by books about people with Asperger’s that claimed we didn’t have empathy (…) My problem wasn’t that I didn’t understand their feelings, but that I didn’t have a clue of how to respond to them” (ch. 18, p. 12) – mostly, Sara’s condition is portrayed with both accuracy and compassion. 

She has her limits (crowds, strangers, jazz music, and even one minute’s lateness make her panic) but also her strengths (cracking her employer’s test cipher in 17 minutes; asking the blunt and necessary questions no one else dares to ask). 

She believes that she is “not capable” of a long-term relationship, but her love interest talks her out of that quite logically:

“I can’t change.”

“You don’t have to. Simple maths. You only have to change the value of one variable to affect the outcome of the whole equation.

“Are you saying you’re that one variable?”

“Well, of all the men who left you, were any of them me? (…) You never need to change.” (ch. 28 p. 32-33)

Not only autistic people need to hear that.

In short, for anyone who is looking for three great books to read, A Desperate Fortune is highly recommended.