title: The Smiles and Tears of Love
author: Slaney, Patrick
description: This fiction novel is an historical romance that starts when the heroine, Mabel, learns of the death of her officer husband at Arras in 1916. The story, with a strong military background, then travels back in time to when Mabel was born in 1872, the daughter of a doctor from a small country town in Ireland. This romance relates what it was like to grow up in Ireland in the late 19
  th
  . Century as we trace her life from school until she falls in love and marries her handsome military man. With her husband, she travels all around the world, suffering the misfortunes and trials of an officer’s wife.  The Boer War in 1900 takes him away, and she has to learn to worry in silence, with her new born baby as she stays at home while he fights a war.  A frustrated Mabel gets involved in a love affair in South Africa in 1912, which has a tragic ending.  The romance ends when, after 2 ½ years of war, her husband is killed in 1916, in France.  There are plenty of times when she is happy and
  smiles
   and, unfortunately, plenty of times when the
  tears
   come.