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Rachel Smedling is not like other women in her isolated Pennine village: she is taller, stronger and weaves cloth like a man. Without her, the household would fall apart, for her mother is ailing and her vicious drunkard father seems to hate her so much he would happily offer money to any man who would wed her.

An eccentric young woman's love for a wild white stallion tempts her into using an ancient magic that overshadows her subsequent life and leads to her affair with the charismatic Louis XIV.

World War I ended well for the Franklins, prosperous Clydeside shipbuilders. But trouble is brewing behind their respectable facade. As the slump of the 1920's begins to bite on Clydeside, troubles both financial and personal invade all their lives.

Lancashire, 1858. Annie Hallam has at last found complete happiness. She has three healthy children and adores her husband Frederick. After years of struggling to make a living in Blisden, Annie knows she deserves to enjoy her life. But worries are imminent.

Spring 1893. Anna returns home, to her brutal father Roderick, where she and her brothers make the best of things and visit their mother - committed to an asylum. Roderick, worried about what his wife may reveal, is unwittingly causing his own downfall.

Life in the fifteen streets was tough, a struggle for survival, but John fought grimly for the world they were rarely allowed to glimpse.

This 1991 novel is volume two in the author's series, "The Work and the Glory," and continues the saga of the Steed family during the early years of LDS Church history, 1830-1836. As the infant Church expands and spreads westward into Ohio and Missouri, the Steeds are swept up in the unfolding drama.