Summary
Angelina Allende emerges as a figure of profound pathos, the daughter of a quixotic visionary whose architectural ambitions for the hamlet of Anne's Bridge devolved into a spectral wasteland of fiscal ruin and personal despair. Following her father's self-inflicted quietus, Angelina is thrust into the predatory maw of Manhattan, ensnared by the duplicitous machinations of two men: Bink, an aging libertine, and Wolver, his opportunistic accomplice. This urban odyssey culminates in a violent restaurant tableau where Wolver’s bullet strikes Bink, yet the legal apparatus, indifferent and blind, brands Angelina the culprit. Her subsequent three-year sequestration in a reformatory serves as a crucible, refining her spirit before her return to the skeletal remains of her patrimony. The arrival of James Deane, a boarder in her desolate home, precipitates a slow-burning romance that eventually dismantles the scaffold of lies surrounding her conviction, facilitating a hard-won liberation and the restoration of her shattered social standing.
Synopsis
The story is of Angelina Allende, who is left an orphan by the suicide of her father, a real-estate visionary who has beggared not only himself but his friends in a vain attempt to "boom" the deserted hamlet of Anne's Bridge. Receiving news of his death, Angelina returns home, where she is presently inveigled into a trip to New York by two men, one of whom wants the property and the other of whom wants Angelina. In a restaurant scene which follows, Bink, the elder of the conspirators, makes advances to Angelina, is repulsed and then is shot by Wolver his fellow conspirator. The police enter, Angelina is accused of the shooting, and she is sentenced at length to a three-years' term in a home for delinquent girls. Emerging at the expiration of her sentence, she returns to Anne's Bridge. Here, in the lonely days that follow, she advertises for boarders and is at last rewarded by the appearance of James Deane. It is here that the love story begins; and it progresses until Angelina is cleared, through Deane's efforts, and, finally, is free to marry him. - New York Dramatic Mirror, November 10, 1917.
