Originally published in Great Britain in 1978, the novel describes Margaret Marsh's coming of age one summer between the world wars. Caught in the backwash of a fervently religious father, a mother bitterly nostalgic for what might have been, the tea and sympathy of some thoroughly secular neighbors and the bawdy jokes of her nanny Lydia, Margaret's world hurtles toward a shattering moment of truth. Drama, tragedy, and a touch of farce lend themselves...

Emotionally abandoned by her father and maternal grandmother when her birth results in her mother's death, young Faith Fox is raised by an unlikely group, including the owners of a commune and her bickering paternal grandparents.