"A powerful story of family love, loyalties -- and doubts." The People's Friend. An Air Mail letter and wallet of photographs from Hong Kong bring unexpected - and shocking - news for Laura Robbins and her younger brother and sister at Spryglass, the tall old family house facing the seashore on the wild Lancashire coast. Since their mother died when Laura was fifteen, she has cared for James and little Becky and kept house at Spryglass while their father, Ken, was away at sea in the Merchant Navy. The children all miss him a great deal, but with Gran and Grandad Jessup living just a short...

It's the late 1940s in Liverpool. Ellen Butterworth's ambitious sweetheart leaves the Navy and comes ashore. An urgent telegram from Ellen's sister, Jeanette, interrupts their wedding plans and Ellen returns to her family's home in the Yorkshire Dales. Unexpectedly, Brian follows Ellen. Surprised and overjoyed, she takes him to meet her mother and sister -- But from the moment Ellen's vivacious younger sister appears in the room, Brian isn't able to take his eyes from Jeanette . . .

At Clockmakers Cottage on the rugged Lancashire coastline, Amy Macfarlene, her younger brother and sister, Edmund and Vicky, together with Aunt Anne Shawcross, are busy making ready for their sister Fanny's wedding - and apprehensive lest their father's packet, Jenet Rae, doesn't sail home to Monks Quay in time for Ramsay Macfarlene to walk his eldest daughter down the aisle at All Hallows. Something other than that is causing Amy sleepless nights, though. While working as a maid at Whiteladies Grange, home of the wealthy and powerful Paslew family, Amy overheard a bitter argument between...