Keepers of the House

This is St Aubin de Terán's first novel. Originally published in 1982, it won the Somerset Maugham Award that year. Set in the Venezuelan Andes, the story tells of a English woman newly married to a sugar planter and of the people she meets in the valley. She has also written "A Valley in Italy".

Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award 1982 ‘Exceptional’ ObserverLydia Sinclair was just seventeen when she arrived on her husband’s estate in the Andes, and from the first day she felt that she belonged there. Keepers of the House tells the story of a young English woman newly married to a sugar planter. As her husband, the last of the Beltran family line, retreats into himself, Lydia finds solace in the stories of Benito, the family’s oldest retainer. Unearthing the Beltran family’s tragic history, she weaves together a rich gothic tapestry in which the fantastic legends of the past are intertwined with the present.