Lost Autumn

By Mary-Rose MacColl

A young woman's coming-of-age in 1920, the royal tour of Edward, Prince of Wales, and the secrets that surface more than seventy years later.

"A perfectly heartbreaking tale of royalty, lies, and friendship."--Kristin Harmel, author of The Room on Rue Amélie

Australia, 1920. Seventeen-year-old Maddie Bright embarks on the voyage of a lifetime when she's chosen to serve on the cross-continent tour of His Royal Highness, the dashing Edward, Prince of Wales. Life on the royal train is luxurious beyond her dreams, and the glamorous, good-hearted friends she makes--with their romantic histories and rivalries--crack open her world. But glamour often hides all manner of sins.

Decades later, Maddie lives in a ramshackle house in Brisbane, whiling away the days with television news and her devoted, if drunken, next-door neighbor. When a London journalist struggling with her own romantic entanglements begins asking Maddie questions about her relationship to the famous and reclusive author M. A. Bright, she's taken back to the glamorous days of the royal tour--and to the secrets she has kept for all these years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Mar 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780593085066

Mary-Rose MacColl

Mary-Rose MacColl is an Australian writer who worked as a journalist, nursing assistant, photocopier operator and corporate writer while studying towards degrees in journalism and creative writing. She is the author of four other novels and a non-fiction book, as well as short stories, feature journalism and essays.

Reviews for Lost Autumn

[cats57_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

t looks like the title of this book has changed from "The True Story of Maddie Brightby Mary-Rose MacColl" so you might have read this already - don't be fooled.This book has some trigger issues that may bother some readers: rape, assault, cancer.I must agree with another reader that said that this book would have made a perfect trilogy. And I think it would have made a BETTER trilogy. I invested a lot of myself into reading this and felt a tad cheated at the end-fuller length stories, books or even novella might have given me that little something that my heart missed.Both women deserved to have a fuller story told; a less rushed and somewhat confusing conclusion.This book did hold my interest after the first few chapters -and the first chapter does resonate and really stay with you throughout the entire novel.I had wished that the characters grew a little more, but I see that there really wasn't enough time for them to do so.I do think that it was a very emotional novel and an interesting look into the early 20th-century royalty.*ARC supplied by the publisher.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel was intriguing, with interconnected stories from the 1920s to the more recent 1990s. In 1920s, Maddie Bright is hired as a part of the staff for Edward, Prince of Wales, during his tour of Australia. While serving, her colleagues include Helen and Rupert Waters, a couple who share a passionate unrequited love for each other, who might be torn apart forever by the events of the trip. In the 1990s, journalist Victoria Byrd is struggling to write about the death of Princess Diana and with her own personal relationship when she's offered the opportunity to meet the legendary and reclusive author M.A. Bright. The stories are, of course, connected, and, while perhaps following a formula familiar to readers of this genre, done well enough to deliver sanctification and a kind of happy ending.