Strange Fits of Passion

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

I think this is where the title of the Anita Shreve book comes from. It's one of those books where you know what's going to happen from the beginning. It's not uplifting, but human qualities, good and bad, are well described. The subject and story are very much of their time. In chronicling the fictional story of the protagonist, Shreve chronicles the real attitudes of society in that period.