by Nina Bawden
First published 1990
The year is 1953, and London prepares for the Queen's Coronation. Joanna, eighteen, helps care for her younger sisters Kate and Poll in their comfortable riverside home. Their mother Ellen has remarried Boyd, whose patient love has given the girls stability they never question. None of them wonder about their absent biological father. Their peaceful world shifts when Aunt Hat arrives for an extended visit. This old family friend brings gossip, drama, and hints about their past that the girls have never heard. Hat's own troubles follow her. Her husband sits in prison for attacking her, and she seems to attract chaos wherever she goes. Yet the real threat to the family's harmony comes not from Hat's revelations or her messy personal life. The danger emerges from the sisters themselves as buried truths surface and family bonds face their greatest test. Bawden weaves together moments of genuine warmth with sharp observations about how families protect and wound each other.
Genres: family-life, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: London, Riverside
Period: 1953, Coronation
238 pages · Hardcover · Random House, Inc.