As evacuation gets underway and Britain waits for the Luftwaffe to arrive, the lives of five very different women are about to collide in the sleepy little village of Crowmarsh Priors. Evangeline has eloped from New Orleans with naval captain Richard Fairfax. A Sussex village is about as far away from home as she can possibly imagine, but brings her nearer to her true love - Laurent, who has fled to France. Alice is resigned to life as the parish spinster, but the war will bring her friendships and passion she could never have foreseen. Elsie leaves her East End home at fifteen, to become an under-house maid for Lady Marchmount. She soon catches the eye of another young evacuee - Bernie Carpenter. Tanni has fled from Vienna, and arrives in Crowmarsh Priors with her newborn son, not knowing if her family are alive or if she will ever see them again...Frances is to see out the war with her godmother, Lady Marchmont. She has lived a carefree life of privilege, but now her desire to help her friend, Tanni, leads her into a whole new world of danger and excitement...Together these five women will face hardship, passion and danger. They form a bond that lasts for the rest of their lives and sees them through their darkest hours.

Helen Bryan was born in Virginia, grew up in Tennessee, graduated from Barnard College and lives in London where she qualified as a barrister and is a member of the Inner Temple. She left the Bar to write full time after publication of her first book. Her latest novel The Valley, the first book of THE VALLEY Trilogy, is set in colonial times in the wilderness of Virginia Colony, where an ill-matched and desperate group of settlers struggle to survive and establish a community in the New World.

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She is the author of two other bestselling historical fiction novels. The first "War Brides" is a World War II saga inspired by family holidays in a small East Sussex village, the wartime reminiscences of older relatives and friends, and the true life stories of the brave young women who joined Churchill's Special Operations Executive. Her second novel "The Sisterhood" is a romantic/religious/mystery saga spanning 400 years, set in sixteenth century Spain and Spanish America and featuring an unlikely modern heroine.

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She is also the author of a biography, "Martha Washington First Lady of Liberty," awarded a Citation of Merit by the Colonial Dames of America and a layman's guide to the English planning system "Planning Applications and Appeals".