Grace Livingston Hill is my guilty pleasure. Aunt Crete's Emancipation is one of her earlier works, and the story is a sort of Cinderella tale.

Lucretia (Aunt Crete) lives with her sister Carrie and social-climbing niece Luella. She is an older woman - frequently described as having beautiful white hair - who does a lot of their housework for them. Naturally they take her for granted, but she feels she owes them because they have taken in the never-married lady and given her a home. Aunt Crete and Carrie had an elder sister Hannah, who married when they were children and went west, where she eventually died. As the story opens, Hannah's boy, Donald, is coming for a visit. Carrie and Luella believe him to be a country hick and leave early for their planned vacation, leaving Aunt Crete to manage him and do the big pile of work they have left behind for her. But - surprise! - he is cultured and wealthy. Aunt Crete was determined to love him no matter what. A chance meeting and an overheard phone conversation give Donald the true idea of what is going on. Determined to rescue his Aunt Crete, he takes her shopping for new clothes and then takes her to the ocean, and to the same hotel where Carrie and Luella are staying. Naturally Aunt Crete's sister and niece do not recognize her at first because of her improved looks. Luella gets her comeuppance, and Aunt Crete goes to live with Donald, to keep house and be a mother to him.

The story line here is pretty predictable. I wanted to shake Aunt Crete a few times for being such a doormat, and yet I could recognize her predicament. She had no resources, so where else could she go but to family? The period every-day details are one of my favorite parts of Grace Livingston Hill's writing. There is plenty of that in this book, including quite a lengthy description of a new, more comfortable, and better shaping corset for Aunt Crete. I listened to this book on Librivox, and it was an easy and pleasant "read". ( )

I read this many years ago. A friend introduced me to GLH's books by gifting me a few and I enjoyed those so much that at some point, I sought out a list of all the books she'd had published and tried to find all of them to read. ( )