The Lark in the Morn

Author: Elfrida Vipont.

Twelve-year-old Kit Haverard is the only daughter of an absent-minded, scholarly Quaker father. Along with three older brothers who are currently away at school, dreamy, untidy Kit has been raised by their young, energetic cousin Laura. Ever since the death of Professor Haverard's wife, Laura has given herself to maintaining an ordered life for her uncle, conscientiously caring for his children, but also jealously protecting him from the day to day affairs of the household. Though Kit is a frustration to her orderly cousin, a stranger to her father and a puzzle to herself, she finds comfort in the realm of make-believe in books and in time shared with her close friends Pony and Helen. Her world begins to expand when, after an illness, she goes to stay with members of her mother's family whom she has never met. To her own amazement, Kit discovers within herself a deep love for music and as a person and as a singer she begins to raise her voice.

This is the first of two novels full of wisdom and charm about Kit Haverard's emerging vocation, richly set in the fascinating English Quaker world of the mid-twentieth century with its silent meetings, committees and mission work, diligent cultivation of knowledge and the arts, and seeking of the light within.