Wendy Robertson's sparkling saga weaves an intriguing web of different generations, which spans half a century In 1991, Bronwen Carmichael is a student at Durham University. Researching aspects of the Second World War, she comes across her mother Rosa's journal, written in 1954 when Rosa was thirteen and England was recovering from the war. And, as Bronwen discovers, it was a dark time in Rosa's childhood too. At the heart of the diary is a deep family secret which now, fifty years later, could severely disturb the self-contained Carmichael women. This secret has tied the family - matriarch Kate, writer Rosa, academic Bronwen, and daughter Lily - with invisible cords which now threaten to break and change the family forever...