By 'quite simply one of the best writers we have' (Sunday Telegraph), a profoundly moving story spanning three generations..Reaching from late 19th-century Cumbria to the present, this elegiac novel celebrates two spirited Grace, a farm labourer's daughter who fatefully followed her heart, and Mary, the child she was forced to give up. Unsung heroines according to Mary's son who, as his elderly mother's mind begins to fail, lovingly recreates their lives and the vanished country of their pasts, linking three generations in a chain of enduring love, loss and courage.