A beautifully written novel with great emotional appeal, of family secrets and wartime heritage, set in Cornwall, London and Warsaw.
The house and the cottage overlooking the sea, on the corner of the big estate, was home to three generations of the Tremain family. Fred Tremain, the country doctor who – with his wife, Martha, for whose sake he had become estranged from his family – came first to this beloved corner of England: Anna, the difficult, determined older child, now a highly successful solicitor; and Barnaby, the easy-going second child, now a vicar to the parish: and the beloved granddaughter, Lucy. It is she whose discoveries of family papers, hidden in the old cottage, brings to light the first of the wartime secrets and begins the process of questioning so many old fears and hatreds, and unlocking the way to new relationships and new loves.
Sara Macdonald has created a wonderful range of characters, depicted with great tenderness and understanding, against a background of the human price paid for the upheavals caused by prejudice, violence and wars today and yesterday. A wonderful novel for all the fans of Anita Shreve, Niall Williams and Rosamund Pilcher.
