Throughout British history, the same thread runs. A fifteen-year-old in 1905 Lancashire, sent away to bear her stepfather's child, who escapes to Blackpool with nothing but courage and a friend. A child caught stealing food in 1952 Battersea, and the woman who runs the local tavern and cannot turn her away. And a woman in the present day who buys a crumbling manor house and finds a sealed journal that pulls the past into everything she has built. Saga fiction at its most honest.
Anna Jacobs, Our Mary Ann - Mary Ann is sent away at fifteen to bear her stepfather's child. Decades later, the First World War and her mother's secrets both demand a reckoning.
Kitty Neale, An Orphan's Hope - London, 1952. The Great Smog has settled over Battersea. Winnie Berry catches a small girl trying to steal food. Grace's grandmother is dying, and Grace has been keeping the secret alone.
Rosie Goodwin, Whispers - When Jess Beddows buys a crumbling manor house, she finds a sealed attic room containing a journal. The story it holds, of servants and masters two centuries before, begins to threaten her present.
