National Network for Equitable Library Service

Lancashire, 1858. Annie Hallam has at last found complete happiness. She has three healthy children and adores her husband Frederick.

For Mattie Willit, caught in a thunderstorm running away from her bullying stepfather,rescue comes in the form of Jacob Kemble,a widowed farmer living with his two young children.

Ismay Deagan has one wish in the world - to leave Ireland and join her brother, Bram, in Australia. However, her father has other ideas and orders her to marry their vicious neighbour Rory Flynn.

Cutter is determind to sabotage the sale of her family's dilapidated ancestral home. Her sister Ginny (in the midst of an affair with a professor) doesn't seem to care either way.

When her husband dies on the eve of their impending European vacation, housewife Emma Hanley watches her dreams of world travel vanish even as she becomes more immersed in the lives of her two livi