The Princess Passes

Lord Montagu Lane has just been publicly humiliated: the woman he loved, Helen Blantock, has married another man. At a dinner party in London, shattered and self-pitying, he encounters Jack and Molly Winston, an audacious American heiress and her brother, who are preparing to motor across Europe in one of those newfangled automobile machines. When they extend an invitation to join their adventure, Lane has little better to do than accept. What begins as a desperate escape from heartache becomes something unexpected: a rattling, perilous journey from London to Lucerne through early twentieth-century Europe, where roads are treacherous, breakdowns are frequent, and the only speed limit is one's own nerve. Alongside the irrepressible Molly, who speaks frankly and laughs easily in ways that Englishwomen simply do not, Lane finds himself rediscovering joy and, perhaps, the capacity for love he thought dead. Part road trip, part romance, part affectionate portrait of a world in transition from horse to horsepower.