Publisher's Synopsis
First came the sin. Then the lies.
He was handsome, charming, irresistable, and an eighteen-year-old
lady-killer, her uncle Cliff's stepson, Ted. But in one terrible night he
would shatter the life of fourteen-year-old Charlotte Dawes and nearly
destroy her family.
Years afterward, Charlotte would remember that night with fear and
loathing, with pain that could be banished only by her work as a gifted
architect, building a new world for others as she conceals her own.
For Charlotte's family, prime employers in New England mill town, what
happened to Charlotte was the beginning of the end. Her father is left
shattered by his daughter's pain. Her troubled mother is unable to cope.
And her distinguished family has fallen from grace, plunged into debt. The
only rock that sustains them in their darkest hours is a woman whose own
guilty secret has given her the power to ruin--or resurrect--the family to whom
she owes her life.
Belva Plain's searing novel cuts to the heart of a family ravaged by secrecy.
But it is ultimately a story of redemption, the kind that grows when one person
dares to tell the truth.
