This is a historical romance set in upper class England beginning just before WWII. A variety of college friends and relatives meet at a summer party. The owner of the estate, a well-known artist, dies unexpectedly but not before impregnating one of the guests.

Within three years the war arrives and they scatter; the men into various government and military jobs and the women turn their country houses into supports of the war – as both the women and their gardeners raise fruits, vegetables and small livestock in former luxury gardens.

The war scenes and war-support efforts do turn this into more than the usual romance (the author, who wrote approximately eighteen books before her death, calls her books ‘romances for thinking woman’). Do not be fooled, though. This is romance with all it’s yearning, soft descriptions of sexual encounters, partner swapping and pettiness used to spoil others’ lives.

It’s just not the genre for me. ( )