Description

The year is 1929 and Honora Beecher and her husband, Sexton, are just settling into a new marriage and a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. While Honora fixes up the derelict house and searches for bits of sea glass on the beach, Sexton risks everything they own to buy the house they both love. Along with millions of other Americans, he is blindsided by the stock market crash and finds himself penniless. The only work he can find is at a nearby mill, where a labour conflict is erupting into violence. Shaken by forces they scarcely understand, Honora and Sexton try to build a marriage and home while overwhelmed by passions of every kind.

Writing with the power and immediacy that have made her novels bestsellers, Shreve unfolds interlocking lives, each with its own share of love, loss and challenge. This is another gripping and unforgettable story of the human heart from one of the most accomplished novelists of our time.

Publisher Review

A beautifully visualised novel of emotional discovery * SUNDAY TIMES * Shreve skilfully unfolds her story of interlinking lives, displaying an intimate knowledge of the workings of the human heart * WOMAN AND HOME * A finely written story of human beings pushed to the edge * SUNDAY MIRROR * When violence erupts, the ensuing tragedy is all the more heartbreaking when described with Shreve's polished restraint * DAILY MAIL *