A young girl's tragic loss will shape her dreams and her future…1930 - Douro Valley, Portugal Twelve-year-old Catherine is watching the Rabalo race in Porto when the sound of a shot being fired changes her life forever. Her beloved mother, mistress for some years to Walter Shellard, a Bristol based wine and port merchant has received distressing news that her lover, Walter, has married a wealthy heiress. In her anguish she takes her own life, leaving poor Catherine alone and heartbroken. Angry and grieving, Catherine is sent to live under the guardianship of her eccentric Aunt Lopa in a...

She must face the terror of war alone to survive…1939 - India When headstrong Nadine Burton learns that the woman, she thought was her Indian Ayah was in fact her mother, she rebels against her father in a flamboyant display of disrespect and dares to dance with her two local best friends at a public party. Her father, local official, Roland Frederick Burton is furious. He arranges for her to be exiled from India and married off to Australian Martin McPherson, owner of a rubber plantation north of Singapore. Within a year Singapore falls to the Japanese. Martin is killed and Nadine...