It was a pineapple given to her by a grateful patient that led Eloise Bennett to meeting the Dutch doctor Timon van Zeilst. Shortly after that, Eloise went to Holland to nurse a patient and there was Dr. van Zeilst again! Thrown into his company, Eloise soon realized that she loved him. But Timon was going to marry the beautiful Liske—so why would he look twice at Eloise?
The publisher’s blurb seemingly says it all; and yet, there’s so much more to this Neels romance than at first appears. To start, it was perfection until one terrible, of-its-time moment at the end. Unlike most of Neels’s romances, which have a fairly narrow scope, Pineapple Girl has a great sweep of setting changes and scenes of breathtaking romantic élan, starting with the meet-cute, possibly Neels’s best accidental “meets.” There have been so many Neels romances where the hero and heroine meet thanks to an accident of some sort, motor or otherwise, something, or someone is smashed up and they work together to put things aright. In this case, when Eloise is gifted the pineapple and is hurrying through the hospital with it, it is “smashed” by Timon’s shoe: “She frowned and lifted her chin because he has begun to smile a little, and that was a great pity, because she took a step which wasn’t there and fell flat on her face. The knitting cushioned her fall, but the pineapple bounded ahead and landed with a squashy thump on the man’s shoe, denting itself nastily.”