"On a cold February day at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Eleanor Moreys stepped out of the coach in the West Riding town of Annotsfield. She was twenty; alone and penniless, she had travelled from London to this bleak, uncouth place to live with cousins of whom she knew nothing reassuring. Her destination lay beyond Annotsfield in the wild Yorkshire hills that lay in the dark, forbidding array beyond the town. Wool Royd is a house of ill omen. Under its sombre roof are a group of individuals whose precise relationships are obscure at first. The mill owner, Charles Moreys, is Eleanor's cousin, a ruin o a man, drunken and morose. Bewildered as she is by the harsh Northern Life that sweeps her along on its storm clouds, Eleanor is no mild-and-water heroine. Possessed of both character and spirit she sets out to fight the tragic curse which shadows the household. As she explores the tangled events which have led to the present peril the story quickens its pace and moves to a superb climax"--GoodReads.