The Avalanche

The Avalanche
A Mystery Story

By

3.5
(4 Reviews)
The Avalanche by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Published:

1919

Pages:

124

Downloads:

5,758

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The Avalanche
A Mystery Story

By

3.5
(4 Reviews)
A wealthy businessman investigates his young and lovely wife -- and finds her history hides complications he hadn't anticipated.

Book Excerpt

most impassioned worker, and unselfish as men go. Two sons in every generation must enter the firm. It was not in the Ruyler blood to take long chances.

III

Life out here in California had been too hurried for more than fleeting moments of self-study, but on this idle Sunday morning Price Ruyler's perturbed mind wandered to that inner self of his to which he once had longed to give a freer expression. It was odd that the conservative training, the rigid traditions of his family, conventional, old-fashioned, Puritanical, as became the best stock of New York, a stock that in the Ruyler family had seemed to carry its own antidote for the poisons ever seeking entrance to the spiritual conduits of the rich, had left any place for that sentimental romantic tide in his nature which had swept him into marriage with a girl outside of his own class; a girl of whose family he had known practically nothing until his outraged father had cabled to a correspondent in Paris to make investigation of the Perrin f

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This is a drawn out tale about a 33 year old wealthy San Francisco businessman who marries a 19 year old beautiful woman, Helene, after a ship board romance. She is accompanied by her mother who is very protective and rather vague about their French origins and past. Once married, he begins to suspect something is awry. Is Helene having an affair? Is she a spendthrift? Was her mother once the queen of a bordello in San Francisco? Is Helene her illegitimate daughter? Who can he trust? He hires a private detective to unravel everything. For me this was a lackluster set of characters enacting a dreary plot.
pretty amazing actually. I went through this site downloading books that sounded good - having no idea if I would enjoy them or not. I was amused by the main character - not to say that I found the story humorous - just that his predjudices and assumptions were amusing. It had a wonderful ending, that may not be realistic, but I found satisfying.