Constance and Faith

by VictoriaRoutledge (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.40

  CONSTANCE & FAITH is set in Cumbria, in the fictional town of Linton on the coast. It is here that Hannah grew up, surrounded by her rather dotty grandmother, mother and aunts. As soon as she is able, she leaves - for London, her own flat, a boyfriend, a career. But, brokenhearted and unemployed, she returns to Linton a few years later to find the town and its people, their routines and preoccupations, completely unchanged - or so it appears on the surface. The guilt and apathy she feels at having gone home haunt her, but gradually she is drawn into this rather genteel, slow-paced world and finds that it is anything but dull and set in its ways. The history of her own family, of past generations, their secrets, love affairs, betrayals and intricate lives, begin to emerge, not least through the stunning paintings that she undertakes to catalogue in the local manor house. And gradually we learn exactly why Hannah left Linton in the first place, not to fulfil her ambition for excitement and success in the big city, but to escape disgrace in the eyes of her own family...

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.40

  Hannah Marshall never thought she'd return to her west coast hometown of Linton, riddled with exhausted coal mines and permanently overhung with rain clouds. Her degree and her job in an international auction house were her ticket out of Linton's faded Georgian splendour, and she escaped gladly. But now, ten years later, Hannah is back, for reasons she won't discuss, to find little seems to have changed. It's still rainy, her mother Fran is still fighting social injustice, and her bewitching grandmother Dora is still ruling the circle of ladies who dominate the town. Seeing Linton through an adult's eyes, Hannah begins to make out a complicated web of old grudges and secrets - and the definite air of scandal that surrounds her turbulent family. What is Dora's real connection with the rich Musgrave sisters, who brought her up in the big villa next door? Why does she refuse to discuss her childhood? And why is Fran so desperate to know? As Hannah faces up to her own demons, she's forced to dig into the family's past and confront the hidden truths that haunt her family and Linton itself.