Résumé
Résumé de La barrière silencieuse
Go deeper: the whole of La barrière silencieuse
About 5 h 40 min to read.À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
You will enjoy this if you like old-fashioned romances, Alpine settings, clever heroines, quiet heroes with a secret, villains in good tailoring, and plots where one kind whim spins into surprises.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
What if a stranger overheard your biggest wish in a hotel lounge and decided, on a whim, to grant it? That is how The Silent Barrier begins. In a London hotel, a young American mining engineer named Charles K. Spencer sits down with his letters. He is twenty-eight and newly rich from a tunnel he drove through a Colorado mountain. Behind him sits Helen Wynton, a poor secretary who spends her days sorting beetles for a professor, and she sighs over her dream of seeing the snows of Switzerland.
Louis Tracy wrote the novel as a pacy romance that mixes a love story with mountain danger and a rivalry between two very different men. He tells it in the warm voice of an old storyteller, and he often lets the reader know more than Helen does. Spencer is steady and dryly funny. Helen is frank and proud. Mark Bower is a rich financier with a past he wants buried. Christian Stampa is an old lame guide with a grief he cannot put down. One harmless impulse is about to change all four lives.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A wish overheard and a secret giftFree
- 2A charming stranger joins the journey
- 3Helen finds Maloja cold and Stampa kind
- 4Two men circle each other over cards
- 5A storm on the Forno glacier
- 6Millicent arrives and the gossip turns
- 7Secrets, love and a storyteller's mountains
Point clé 1 sur 7
A wish overheard and a secret gift
The story opens in the Embankment Hotel in London. Charles K. Spencer settles in a quiet corner with a cigar and a glass of plain water, which astonishes the French waiter. Two young women sit down just behind him. One is Millicent Jaques, a dancer who spends far more than she earns to keep her name in the papers. The other is Helen Wynton, her old school friend, who earns thirty shillings a week.
Spencer knows he is eavesdropping, yet he cannot stop. Helen laughs about her work for the professor. She says her dream is to see the eternal snows and cross the great passes she has read about. Then a stout, well-dressed man walks in, and Millicent tries to avoid him. He is Mark Bower, a rich financier, and his eyes rest on Helen a little too long. Spencer dislikes him at once.
By evening his plan is set. Helen would refuse charity, so he visits the shabby offices of a weekly paper called The Firefly. He asks the editor, Mackenzie, to send Helen to the Maloja-Kulm hotel as the paper's correspondent, with all costs paid. His firm condition is that she must never learn who is behind it.
Helen reads the letter again and again in disbelief. She finds tickets and one hundred pounds waiting at a bank, and she decides the paper simply means to promote itself. Only the reader knows what lies behind it. That gap between what Helen believes and what is true runs through the whole book.
A small, kind impulse can start a story far bigger than the person who feels it.
That’s 1 of 7 key points.
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Go deeper: the whole of La barrière silencieuse
About 5 h 40 min to read.Paperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way.Email me when it is printed
Questions about La barrière silencieuse
What is The Silent Barrier about?
It follows Helen Wynton, a London secretary whose dream of seeing the Alps is secretly granted by an American engineer, Charles K. Spencer. At a Swiss hotel she meets a rival suitor, a mysterious old guide and a jealous friend.
Who is Mark Bower in The Silent Barrier?
Mark Bower is a wealthy London financier and former mountaineer who follows Helen to the Alps. He is charming and powerful, but he guards a secret from his younger years that threatens his plans.
Where is The Silent Barrier set?
It is set in London and in the Upper Engadine in Switzerland, mainly at the Maloja pass. Scenes include a grand hotel, a small cemetery, a mountain hut and the Forno glacier.
Is The Silent Barrier a true story, and when was it written?
It is a work of fiction by Louis Tracy from the early twentieth century. The setting and the mountain climbing draw on real Swiss places, but the characters and plot are invented.
Is The Silent Barrier easy to read?
It is told in clear, lively prose with short chapters, plenty of dialogue and a clear cast of characters. The narrator's humor and the steady pace of events make it easy to follow.
Cite this edition
Tracy, Louis. The Silent Barrier. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-silent-barrier.
Tracy, L. (2026). The silent barrier. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-silent-barrier (Original work published 1910)
Tracy, Louis. The Silent Barrier. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-silent-barrier.
@book{tracy2026silent,
author = {Tracy, Louis},
title = {The Silent Barrier},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-silent-barrier},
note = {First published 1910}
}
