“My book of the year. A refreshing and interesting example of parallel stories told sensitively by engaging protagonists who are trying to find their place in the world. The family relationships and their complexities are beautifully portrayed.” — Reader review ★★★★★

When your life changes in a moment, how do you rewrite your story?

In 1940s Britain, with the Second World War raging, Alice is working in a laboratory developing a new miracle medicine. Made to leave school at sixteen and abandon her aspiration to be a teacher, she learns instead how curing people may be her destiny.

In the present day, Jo, already in a failing marriage, is devastated when she hears her daughter’s life is on a knife edge. At her bedside Jo starts to read Alice’s diary, found the previous day in a vintage handbag.

A door opens onto the past, revealing a young woman’s fierce determination to succeed against all odds. Past and present overlap and merge as life-changing events resonate across the gulf of time.

This is a story of a mother whose life is blown apart. Now she must find a way to put it back together. Can Alice show her the way?