Edward Maichin is the golden boy of the Chapels. But at home, Edward's hidden darkness runs riot: his Irish Catholic mother, has no control over him since his father, Ellis, fled to America; his two brothers, Rhys and Caspar, live in fear of him. Only Theo, his imaginative younger sister, dares defy him. A suspicious death halts Edward's rise, forcing the family out of the valley, to the mines of the North-East, where Theo's talent for writing begins to match her brother's skills in social climbing. But when Theo takes a position as companion to a strange old woman, she discovers a family even more complex and vulnerable than her own...
