SOURCE: A review of Western Wind, in New York Times Book Review, April 10, 1994, p. 35.

In the following review, Jaffee finds Western Wind slightly melodramatic but admires the book's probing of human relationships without offering simplistic solutions.

[In Western Wind], to her dismay, 11-year-old Elizabeth Benedict has been sent to stay with Gran for a month by her parents, who have just brought home a new baby. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth is resentful and sullen, and the prospect of spending August with her "unpredictable and ungrandmotherly" Gran only adds to her unhappiness.

Gran—Cora Ruth Benedict—a painter whose attitudes and words are often as sharp and pointed as the rocky landscape she loves, has left the picturesque but tourist-ridden charm of Camden, Maine, to settle off the coast on rustic Pring Island. Unsentimental, proud and opinionated, Gran is a stickler for proper English usage, honesty and clean living.

So...