The late 1960s. For Persephone Plover, the daughter of distant and neglectful parents, the innocent, isolated days of childhood are long past. Now she must deal with the emotions of an adult world …

Meanwhile in Melton, in the West Country, Jack Curtis - a self-made millionaire - has employed Persephone’s aunt, a garden designer in her sixties, to deal with the terraces and glasshouses of the once beautiful local manor house he has acquired at vast expense. He also has plans to start an arts festival, as a means to avoid the loneliness of the recently divorced.

Also in Melton are the Musgrove siblings, Thomas and Mary, whose parents originally owned and lived in Melton House. They are still trying to cope with emotional consequences of the tragic death of Thomas’s wife, Celia … as is Francis, Celia’s brother, who has come to live with them and thereby, perhaps, to find his way through life.

‘Graceful, moving… Howard’s elegant prose, keen eye for detail and ability to make the reader care about her characters are second to none’ Daily Express