The white house, facing the wrong way, stands high on a hill. For 150 years it has been lived in by an array of characters. Two old sisters who learned to read in exchange for teaching sewing, a little girl who explored a magical path, a young man who went to the First World War and a hard bitten submariner who came back from the second, a young engineer who went to America for two years and stayed there for over forty, but for whom this house was always home.
Beth begins the story in the present day, and then time slides into the early years of the house in the mid-nineteenth century. Family by family they come alive, each facing the challenges of their time.
Beth's life has been very different. What does she have in common with the people who lived here before her? Much more than you might expect.
Watching and protecting those who love it is the house; always white, sometimes with a grey trim, sometimes blue. It listens, and occasionally it nudges characters into action. Its garden stretches towards the river; a world of potatoes and roses, as varied as the people who cultivated it.
The story goes beyond the house into the community, and the national and international events which touch the lives of those who have lived there.
And then there is the marmalade, from an old recipe handed down one generation to the next. Its smells and its colours belong to Spain, but lives, surrounded by books, in a cellar where a silver jeweller works her craft.
This book begins in the present, goes back into the past, and in returning to the starting point looks at the opportunities and the challenges, the hopes and the fears of different generations. The old walls listened to their stories and shared their dreams.
