Résumé :
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When a family is forced to leave their beloved home, the sense of injustice never dies... A spellbinding novel of love, loyalty and the ties that bind.
The Coles have lived in Middlemere, an isolated tenant farm, for half a century. When, in 1942, the family are threatened with eviction, Martha Cole and her small son, Jem, flee the house, while Martha's husband, Sam, and their eight-year-old daughter, Romy, barricade themselves inside Middlemere. When Sam brandishes a shotgun, the police are called in, and Romy sees her father shot dead. Years later, Martha Cole has remarried and she and her family are living in much-reduced circumstances. Romy, now almost nineteen, is quick, clever and single-minded. She has never forgotten - or forgiven - the violence and injustice of the Coles' eviction, and schemes to restore the family fortunes, to rescue her mother from drudgery and to protect her brother, Jem, a charming scoundrel who is always in trouble. Most of all, she longs to escape the poverty and narrowness of her surroundings. A chance meeting with Mirabel Plummer, owner of the exclusive London hotel, the Trelawney, is about to change Romy's life for ever...
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