As usual the reviews of a book – any book – run all over the place, though with a 151 reviews, Let Love come Last (1949), averaging out to 4.1 stars, come out to not-bad. Dysfunctional families are typical of TC, though they usually play through a brother relation. TC hated her brother.

Often, though, the brunt of the story is on the children, often regarded as evil by TC, as in Wicked Angel (much later, 1965). Since her books are still read today, it is common to have lay-reviewers weigh in on whether her stories are dated.

I'll start with three reviews, 2 blazingly positive, the longest though, noting TC's take on families makes you wonder why she had one. Ah, yes. Abortion wasn't easy to obtain back then.

The timelessness of issues comes up much from readers of TC. Rightly so, for TC was 100% certain that the real issues never change, because people never change. In order, I will list three reviews of her book. Then, I will bring up a court case, named for Allan Bakke – I'm sure with a reminder, that many of you will recall it – that was always played in the newspapers one way, while I personally saw it entirely another. My story on it, a story that has transpired over the last 40 years, is called grade inflation. Finally I list the links for the Open Road promotions for the novel.

Three reviews of Let Love come Last
Patricia * gave it 5 stars
I recommend this book to anyone with a dysfunctional family....so everyone. “Let Love Come Last” will resonate with me always. I have grown from its read.
An Amazon Reviewer gave it 5 stars
Read this book many, many years ago, plus quite a few of her other books. This book truly teaches us that spoiling your children does not earn you their love, but can build resentment in the long run. A must read for young parents and also children who can handle adult books. Yes, Taylor Caldwells books can overwhelm, but if one perseveres they leave one sometimes in tears and sometimes full of joy!

Philip rated it 3 stars
Yet another of those 1940s Caldwell novels I've had on-hand for ages and not gotten to. As seems typical of her other novels of this period, things get off to a slow start but become more engrossing. This one's about Parenthood, and is "dedicated with compassion to all who are parents and to all who hope to be." As things turned out, Caldwell's own record as a parent was rather troubled.

I think I’ve mentioned in comments about another Taylor Caldwell novel that a family is not necessarily a happy thing to be part of in one of her novels, especially when at least one of the parents is blindly over-indulgent, and the children are clever and manipulative. Nor is it unusual for parents to dislike their children (and vice-versa), or children to dislike their siblings. All of this certainly applies to the Prescott family in Let Love Come Last .

In a nutshell: Ursula loves her husband, William; William is obsessed with his children and with making a financially secure future for them. The children are selfish and over-indulged and don't much care for either of their parents, or for each other, for that matter.

Allan Bakke and the story of standards that varied catastrophically
Bakke is just under six feet tall, has blond hair, blue eyes that betray his Norwegian ancestry. From Minnesota, born in 1940, what passed as typical middle class back then: father a mailman, mother a teacher. His family moved to Florida and in college he majored in engineering at the University of Minnesota, where he earned a 3.51 grade point average on a scale of 4. Not straight A's, but close to it in that day.

He joined the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps; and as it was not uncommon in those days, the Pentagon paid his tuition and living expenses, but left him with a debt of four years of indentured service after his graduation in 1963. He because a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps; then spent seven months in Vietnam as commander of a combat antiaircraft missile unit; and then he enlisted in the nation's race to the moon.

For bright guys like Bakke, it was the patriotic thing to do.

Yes, I too became an engineer who worked on the Lunar excursion module (that thing that landed on the moon with famous astronauts in it), the Nautilus submarine (which planned to launch atomic missiles in wind-generated seas) and the Saturn Missile (the very object that launched the Apollo missions). What I am telling you, is I can feel Bakke's patriotism, for I felt it, too.

Bakke was an engineer at Ames Research Center near Palo Alto, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration laboratory that, among other things, conducts research into such areas as the effects of radiation on laboratory animals and the effects of outer space on the human body. I know enough about this to recognize that Allan Bakke would have easily come upon physicians who would have recognized this bright guy could easily have been a doctor, too.

So he began courses in chemistry and biology to meet requirements for a premed major. Wikipedia tells me that he took classes that often went forced him to work before dawn, or well into the night, to get his job done. I'll let them tell it.

Bakke became a candy striper, a hospital volunteer. He was an incongruous male figure among the women. He took tough assignments, often working late with battered victims of car accidents or fights. His desire to become a doctor deepened. But he had one big mark against him and he knew it—his age.

Ageism doesn't start when you are 65, or 55, or any particular age. It actually is ever present. Here is what is interesting to me. Go look at Bakke's gradepoint. As a professor, I came upon students who told me they had never gotten a B in a math class. My thoughts: ''How is that possible? This person was clueless about anything above High School algebra.''

Bakke's 3.51 grade point was VERY HIGH when I went to college. I was in Honors College on the basis of having that or higher. Bakke was an exceptional student. Alas, by the time he tried to become a doctor, grades had gotten blown out of the water.

Then, though, the media was not aware of this. Bakke's issue became affirmative action: Students who had lower grade point, but an appropriate ethnicity, were put past Bakke. I have never been able to figure why they settled on affirmative action, when the real issues were ageism and grade inflation.

How about motherhood? How is it possible to recalibrate motherhood? Some women were natural mothers, others had it forced upon them. TC was neither. She literally avoided the role of the mother, every which way she could, except to raise the specter of awful children in her novels. Those children were awful, just like Peggy was awful, and for Peggy, just like I was awful.

Bakke was a very good student, a credit to his country. Eventually he was allowed to go to medical school, but not for the right reasons.

Why in the world Bakke had to be turned into an affirmative action case is beyond me. Maybe it was just the easiest route? I can see that Allan Bakke was quite an American, and a smart one, too. My own experience from that time (I'm only a bit younger than Bakke) told me much of what few from the late '70s knew. No, from my experience, Bakke's aren't common, and the average person isn't getting ripped off by affirmative action,

I wish reviewers would tell a little more of what they are thinking. The one reviewer who notes that TC didn't turn out too good as a mother, didn't even hint at any evidence.

How about Cinderella's mother? Would an (ahem!) Court have given her a pass? After all it's hard to be a mother, and that Cinderally is so dirty and does her chores so badly.

Let Love Come Last

By Taylor Caldwell

Bestseller, Fiction

$2.99 $17.99

New York Times bestseller

Born into the humblest of circumstances, William Prescott is determined to amass a fortune large enough to ensure that his four children will never want for anything. As William’s business empire grows, so too does his insatiable need to be loved and admired. William’s wife, Ursula, tries to fill their ostentatious home with warmth and common sense, but her efforts are destined to backfire. The children resent her for trying to discipline them, and William’s ambition blinds him to any point of view but his own. Only when two of his spoiled children plot against him does William realize that the ties that bind the Prescott family have become warped beyond recognition.

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Michael Fried, Grandson
For the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell

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