“The day Martha Winters decided to tear her family apart began like any other day.”
This is how the book opens, but in the first section you learn that seething under the surface, the family is ripped in several ways already – children and grandchildren spread around the world. Slights and unspoken truths are undercurrents.
The place in the title is Winterfold – a blissful spot, where Martha and David have brought their family up.
Chapters are narrated by different characters so you get different perspectives on the same incidents and relationships.
The narrative also goes backwards and forwards in time so you can see the impact that decisions have rippling forwards.
While the covers of Evans’ novels gets the chick lit treatment, some of the issues she deals with are far from frothy – domestic violence or abuse, adoption, bereavement, plagiarism, women’s role in the world alongside some of the romantic staples of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again.
The hopes and worries of older, more mature women even get a look in.
