In Daphne du Maurier's acclaimed debut novel, Janet Coombe longs to know the wildness of the sea and a life of adventure and true freedom. But she is a prisoner of her forbidding times and marries her cousin, a staid shipbuilder. However, she carries within her the loving spirit that she passes on to her beloved seafaring son, his children, and his children's children, as they overcome hardship and heartbreaking loss. Richly plotted and set in a rapturous creation of the Cornish countryside, The Loving Spirit is a stunning novel written on a grand scale, a saga filled with humor and satire, courage, and an abiding sense of the romantic.