Richard and Rachel fell in love as teenagers and married at twenty-one. Both had survived childhoods marred by poverty and early deaths. Richard trained as an accountant, and they had two beautiful children and a lovely home. Then, the ovarian cancer that ran in Rachel's family struck, and she was gone without seeing her children marry or holding her grandchildren. Given the family history, their daughter Carys was advised to have frequent screenings and to marry and have children early, followed by a hysterectomy. Following her marriage and during her pregnancy, she too was diagnosed with...

Damaris Moore keeps having a recurring dream of being chased through a dark forest by unseen demons prodding her with pointed sticks as she runs for a large beech tree, seeking the shelter of its overhanging branches that seems to offer her sanctuary. Always at this point, she wakes up. But is it only a dream? Or is it infinitely more frightening: an out-of-body experience in which she is travelling back in time to be someone else, before she was even born? On each succeeding night the dream becomes more and more real. Suddenly, on Thanksgiving Day, she is twice drawn back into it, and...