Flesh and Blood is the first of seven novels which make up The Land of the Living, a sequence which is one of the finest achievements of Welsh writing in English. Amy Parry is the central character of the series, and it is her struggles and the trials and tribulations of her family and friends that provide the framework of a complex model of twentieth-century experience, centred for the most part on Welsh life. Flesh and Blood traces Amy's early life from the day she is adopted by her uncle and aunt before the First World War, until the end of her school-days. She is a pretty and demure child, an object of affection, apparently both clever and docile. However, as she grows up her ambiguous social status results in an emotional confusion which hardens into a bitter resentment of poverty and a determination to achieve and secure independence.

The Best of Friends is the second of seven novels which make up The Land of the Living, a series which is one of the finest achievements of Welsh writing in English.

This, the third of the novels in the series The Land of the Living, which began with Flesh and Blood and The Best of Friends, follows the career of the central character, Amy Parry, who is now a county school teacher in a small coastal resort on the Llµn peninsula.

The fourth of the novels in The Land of the Living sequence finds Amy Parry bereft of her best friend Enid who has died in childbirth, unable to marry Val Gwyn who is seriously ill with TB, and determined not to choose poverty and struggle with her former lover Pen Lewis. When she marries John Cilydd More, companionship and motherhood bring her security and some fulfilment. But her peaceful existence is invaded by the turbulence of striking miners and hunger marchers – and the return of Pen Lewis. The events of the Spanish Civil War come to hold great significance in 1930s Wales, and particularly for Amy.

Open Secrets, the fifth volume in the Land of the Living sequence, finds Amy Parry and her husband, the poet John Cilydd More, confronted with not only the destruction and desperation of the Second World War, but also the strain of conflicting political beliefs on their marriage. As Amy struggles to balance her loyalty to her family with her own independent ambitions, she becomes involved with the welfare of German refugees, the Labour movement and war work in ways that find little favour with her husband and even less with Nanw, her jealous sister-in-law. Their compelling story unfolds against the turmoil of a radically changing world.

In National Winner, Amy Parry appears to have reached a summit of affluence and influence. As Lady Brangor, the widow of her third husband, she plans to create a cultural centre for women at Brangor Hall. These ambitious plans are impeded by the obsession of her youngest son, Peredur, with the mysterious death of his father, John Cilydd More, Amy's first husband, the poet and National Winner of the title. Her devoted stepson, Bedwyr, and her other son Gwydion, each with his own agenda and concerns, are also resistant to Amy's enthusiasms and practised charm. This is a family that has emerged from a tightly knit and recognisable each now in his or her own way, in spite of obstacles, seeks a path to fulfillment in a post-war period of unprecedented change.

There are, of course, bonds of attachment underlying all the novels in the "Land of the Living" sequence. In this final volume, they bind together the voices of the dead poet, John Cilydd More, and his youngest son Peredur in a twin-track narrative. Their words reflect the splendours and the miseries of a century of wars and relentless progress. Peredur defies both his mother's hostility and his two brothers' lack of concern to seek out the truth of his father's death and to take part in a protest against the 1969 Investiture that goes violently wrong. Only at the very end when the central figure of the series herself, Amy Parry, is facing death does there seem hope of reconciliation.