The long-awaited Liverpool-at-war novel from an author whose tales of love and loss, passion and pain during the great wars are in a class of their own.

Against the background of bomb-ravaged Liverpool, Meg Blundell mourns the death of her beloved mother. She is nineteen, father unknown, her past veiled in mystery by her Ma. Why, she wonders, does the rent man never call at No.1 Tippet's Yard? He does everywhere else. Why did Ma avoid talk of her father, but speak only of the idyllic house called Candlefold – a haven and a heaven to her?

With Ma gone, Meg must go back to her roots; and in the long sweet summer of 1941 find and lose love.