With the help of her diary, Sarah Morris tries to make a pattern of the lives of her family and her friends... The result is a brightly woven tapestry of which the main thread, Sarah’s own story, is the love which grows naturally from the innocent affection of a child into the all-absorbing passion of a woman. Sarah tells of her happy childhood at the Vicarage. The Morris family is full of life and individuality: Lewis, handsome and brave, Willy, less fortunate, and Lottie with her flaxen curls, who takes what she wants from life regardless of other people’s feelings. Gradually Sarah’s world expands as her brothers grow up and bring back friends from Oxford—among them Charles, the charming yet slightly mysterious Austrian to whom she is strangely drawn. Over the years they fall in love, but suddenly the harmony of their lives is broken by the outbreak of war, and Charles must return to Austria. While she awaits his return, Sarah quietly continues working hard and caring for her family. But she can't stop wondering if she will ever see her sweetheart again...

This attractive family saga opens with Sarah, recently married to Charles, furnishing a cottage in Scotland and starting on a life in sharp contrast to her own experiences in wartime London and the years Charles spent as a prisoner of war... Their full entrance into village life is helped by Sarah's grandparents, who have given them the land on which they have built their cottage. Sarah and Charles work together, collaborating in translations for a publisher, whilst Charles also embarks on writing his autobiography. Yet it soon becomes not books, but life itself which increasingly engrosses him and Sarah. In particular Frederica, the daughter of Sarah’s frivolous and pleasure-seeking sister, commands their sympathy and love. One by one the characters of a large, attractive family make their appearance, and their relationships are woven into a deeply satisfying story. But it is the maturing of Frederica from her infancy into a young woman which stands at the centre, and it is through her that the nexus of family problems is finally resolved... Praise for D. E. Stevenson: "Consistently charming" - The Times "Mistress of the light novel" - The Times D. E. Stevenson (1892–1973) was a Scottish author of more than 40 light romantic novels. Her father was the lighthouse engineer David Alan Stevenson, first cousin to the author Robert Louis Stevenson.