“K”

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

“Across the Street, the Rosenfeld boy had stopped by Dr. Wilson’s car, and was eyeing it with the cool, appraising glance of the street boy whose sole knowledge of machinery has been acquired from the clothes-washer at home.”

Sidney Page has grown up in genteel poverty on a street like many others, where a brash young man hangs around hoping to win her heart and her hand. But the family fortunes worsen, and Sidney makes several decisions that will change her life forever: She turns down her hopeful young suitor, decides to enter nursing school, and rents out a room in the family home. Their boarder, K. Le Moyne, is a humble, quiet man, but his sensitive kindnesses quickly endear him to the street’s residents—and to Sidney herself, who soon learns to rely on him as a confidante and friend. When she falls in love with Dr. Max Wilson, a rising surgeon with a fast car and a faster love life, K. decides he must move away to keep Sidney from learning of his deepening feelings for her. Then tragedy—and surprising secrets from K’s past that surface unexpectedly—challenge Sidney’s ideas of who she is and her place in the world—and K’s place in her heart. But is it too late?  

“Mary Roberts Rinehart has never written a story of more idealistic charm than her new novel, ‘K.’ It is sweet and wholesome, compelling in the sympathetic appeal of its central character, alluring in its grace and vividness of description of commonplace scenes and incidents, delightful in its blending of romance, mystery, humor and pathos—in short, a book that will be read with pleasure from the first to the last of its 400 pages.” The Boston Globe, August 1915

“‘K.’ is a sweet, true and altogether entrancing story. It combines all the elements that make a novel attractive to the general reader—seriousness mingled with appropriate humor, a story well told, a love that is most appealing and a wealth of interesting incident throughout, to say nothing of a mystery that puzzles clear to the end. Such a book cannot help proving a great success.” The News Journal, August 1915