Wendy Robertson's sparkling new 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 World War 2, 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...