Three Margarets  -  1897
Laura E. Richards
106 pages
genre  -  Young Adult
my rating  -  3 out of 5 stars

Three cousins are asked to spend the summer at their uncle's house on Long Island, NY.  These three young ladies have never met each other, and their lives are completely different from the others.  But they are cousins and they all have the same name:  Margaret Montfort. (They have been named after their grandmother.)

Rita is the oldest and comes from Cuba.  Her mother was Spanish, and Rita's temperament is as fiery as you can imagine.  Margaret is next in age, is from the American Northeast, is an only child and a recent orphan.  Peggy is the youngest, is from the wild, wild West, lives on a ranch and is one of nine children.

While it was interesting to see how Margaret managed her two cousins, nothing too exciting happens, except for some drama in the end.  And it ended just how I thought it would.  According to Wikipedia, Three Margarets is the first of six books:

Three Margarets (1897)

Margaret Montfort (1898)

Peggy (1899)

Rita (1900)

Fernley House (1901)

The Merryweathers (1904)

My favorite line in the book?  "...during the clear, calm days and years...we ought to be, laying by, as it were; storing up light and strength and happiness for the dark days when we may so deeply need them."

About the author  -

Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards (February 27, 1850 – January 14, 1943) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a high-profile family. During her life, she wrote over 90 books, including children's, biographies, poetry, and others. Her father was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe. Julia Ward Howe, Laura's mother, was famous for writing the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

In 1871, Laura married Henry Richards. He would accept a management position in 1876 at his family's paper mill at Gardiner, Maine, where the couple moved with their three children.

In 1917, Laura won a Pulitzer Prize for Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, a biography, which she co-authored with her sister, Maud Howe Elliott.