Parts Unknown Author:Frances Parkinson Keyes Dust jacket pictures a light blue & dark blue background, sword & uniform; published 1958. — "In these days of diplomatic intrigue and international complications, it is especially fitting that FPK, whose experience with the men and women of the diplomatic service has been life-long, should be telling in a dramatic, exciting novel about the men a... more »nd women who represent the United States abroad.
Michael Trent is in the foreign service of the US and has just been appointed vice-consul to La Paz when the story begins. Fearful of separation, he and Daphne Daingerfield, who has lived all her life in an isolated part of Virginia, plunge headlong into matrimony and set out, penniless, but rapturous, for "parts unknown."
Michael, brilliant and engaging, obsessed with driving ambition, lacks the patience to plod over a long hard road; and this failing nearly wrecks both his marriage and his career. Daphne, though sensitive and shy, has qualities of steady purpose and enduring courage. For all her apparent fragility, it is she who clings firmly to the vision which makes their dreams come true. In spite of almost inseperable physical and financial hardships in South America, through death and destruction in China, they begin at last to find fulfillment in the impregnable security of an ancient Norman castle. The story ends in London, amidst the pageantry of the Court of St. James."« less