Days after her mother dies, Josie Knight makes a startling discovery among her personal effects. Secreted within the clutter of the London house she will soon have to sell, lies a yellowing envelope in the folds of a treasured rocking chair. A gift that was never sent, a relic of a doomed romance? Somehow Josie is sure it conceals a story.
But there is no one left to tell it. Rumours surrounding her grandmothers transformation from American Southern belle to affluent English lady in the 1920s are part of family folklore. Why did Blanche marry so quickly? What was she running from? The rocking chair was hers, brought over from Savannah, Georgia, to the sprawling house under the South Downs where she lived for the rest her life, and where Josie remembers spending the happiest days of her childhood.
Something else, however, has been passed down through the generations. As she indulges her curiosity into her familys rich but often troubled history, Josie realizes she much act to prevent the dark pattern of her mothers and grandmothers lives forming once again in her own.
Contrasting the fortunes of four generations of women with the search for a familys roots, Remembered Dreams layers past and present with great skill and poignancy, concealing vital truths until the very last page.
Days after her mother dies, Josie Knight makes a startling discovery among her personal effects. Secreted within the clutter of the London house she will soon have to sell, lies a yellowing envelope in the folds of a treasured rocking chair. A gift that was never sent, a relic of a doomed romance? Somehow Josie is sure it conceals a story.
But there is no one left to tell it. Rumours surrounding her grandmothers transformation from American Southern belle to affluent English lady in the 1920s are part of family folklore. Why did Blanche marry so quickly? What was she running from? The rocking chair was hers, brought over from Savannah, Georgia, to the sprawling house under the South Downs where she lived for the rest her life, and where Josie remembers spending the happiest days of her childhood.
Something else, however, has been passed down through the generations. As she indulges her curiosity into her familys rich but often troubled history, Josie realizes she much act to prevent the dark pattern of her mothers and grandmothers lives forming once again in her own.
Contrasting the fortunes of four generations of women with the search for a familys roots, Remembered Dreams layers past and present with great skill and poignancy, concealing vital truths until the very last page.