"You see I must go, don't you, Kitty?" Kip asked. Everything in her cried out, No, I don't understand. What about her dreams, her desires, the life they had planned together? Then she remembered the epitaph on the head-stone in the old hillside cemetery, the one that had made such a lasting impression on her: "What I gave, I have; what I spent, I saved, What I kept, I lost." It had been true a hundred years ago, and it was just as true now. If she did not let Kip go freely, he would go anyway, and she would lose him. You could not keep what did not want to be kept. Eventually Kip would be...

The final book of the fictional Brides of Montclair Series, in which contemporary artist Joy Montrose, heir to the Southern patrician Montrose family, discovers healing, the secret of her past, and hope for the future.

Craig Cavanaugh opened his briefcase and drew out the folder containing the manuscript. It was getting dark when he finished reading. No question, he thought, Kitty Traherne can write. Her face came back into his mind. He saw the pain in her eyes, heard the urgency in her voice, as he recalled the passion with which she had told him her reason for writing this highly controversial book. A slight flush had swept over her pale face as she said, "I think this country is in danger of being drawn into another foreign war, Mr. Cavanaugh." Kitty Traherne, who had been a field nurse in France during...