There’s no shortage of novels about orphans whose rich fathers deserted the women they had secretly married. In Fran, J. Breckenridge Ellis mocks those novels by heaping one absurdity after another onto the standard plot line.
Fran appears at the Littleburg home of philanthropist Hamilton Gregory one evening, announces she is going to make it her home, and does.
Gregory lies about who Fran is to protect his reputation as a pillar of the church. She’s willing to let him have his cover story if there’s a chance she can have a real home.
Fran quickly wins the hearts of Mrs. Gregory, her mother and her older brother, but not as quickly as she makes a enemy of her father’s secretary, Grace. Fran senses the relationship between her father and Grace is unhealthy for the household.
Fran doesn’t see how getting rid of Grace could be any harder than taming lions, and she knows how to tame lions.
Fran enlists the handsome and socially inept school superintedent to help her get rid of Grace and teaches him the proper way for a man to declare his love to an ex-lion tamer.
Nothing about Fran is plausible, but everything is charming.
Fran
by J[ohn] Breckenridge Ellis
Illus by W. B. King
1912 Bestseller #10
Project Gutenberg EBook #6057
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