by Melvyn Bragg
First published 2014
Mary's mind grows cloudy with age, but her son refuses to let their family stories disappear. He pieces together the life of Grace, his grandmother, a farm laborer's daughter in late nineteenth century Cumbria who made choices that changed everything. Grace fell in love and followed her heart, but circumstances tore her away from Mary, the daughter she bore. The child Grace was compelled to surrender grew into the elderly woman whose memories now slip away like water. As Mary's son gathers fragments of their lives, he rebuilds a lost world of rural England and uncovers how love persisted across decades of separation. The stories of these two women, grandmother and granddaughter, reveal how ordinary people carry extraordinary courage through loss, sacrifice, and the relentless passage of time.
Genres: romance, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 19th-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, lyrical
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Cumbria
Period: Late 19th Century
256 pages · Paperback · Sceptre