The attack on 15-year-old Joe Kennedy was vicious. Sheila Armstrong's grandson Leo, usually a quiet boy, was found holding a knife. Harriet Kennedy cannot cope with her son's pain; and Sheila, who reared Leo, cannot bear the guilt. This book presents a moving tale about how two women confront the complex range of emotions that motherhood entails.

What happens after a tragedy in the family? A teenager has died in mysterious circumstances and the different ways in which the mother and father respond to this and how it affects the other siblings are at the heart of this novel.

The curiously named Isamay, a would-be academic, is trying to write a coherent thesis about grandmothers in history - from Sarah Bernhardt and George Sand to the matriarchal Queen Victoria and other influential grannies -- while constantly ambushed by the secrets her own family has been keeping. An only child, she is named after her grandmothers, Isa and May, who were there at her birth and who have formed and influenced her in very different ways. Jealous of each other, they both want to be first in their granddaughter's affections. Isa has an edge, in that young Isamay looks like her, but...

A powerful, moving story about motherhood, abandonment and guilt which casts a shadow across generations.
Born in Carlisle in 1887, brought up in a children's home and by reluctant relatives, Evie, with her wild hair and unassuming ways, seems a quiet, undemanding child.
Shona, born almost seventy years later, is headstrong and striking. She grows up in comfort and security in Scotland, the only child of doting parents. But there are, as she discovers, unanswered questions about her past.
The two girls have only one thing in common: both were abandoned as babies by their mothers....