Bridget Gether's parents had been killed in the
wartime blitz and she had lived with the Overmeers at
Balderstone, their sprawling property in the
Northumbrian countryside, since she was a child. Unaware
that she had been manipulated into agreeing to marry
their son Laurence, only an encounter with Bruce
Dickenson, the son of a neighbouring farmer, opened her
eyes to the possibility that she might be making a
mistake. 'Once you are married,' Bridget's future
mother-in-law tried to reassure her, 'everything will
fall into place'. But Bridget had her reservations,
although she told herself she has loved Laurence
Overmeer with a schoolgirl passion for years. But could
she trust him, especially after the event that had
caused this heart-searching? Had he been seeing someone
else all the time he had been courting her? She decided
that there were sufficient grounds for doubt, so she
called off the marriage. However, she had reckoned
without the formidable Overmeer family, whose desperate
business straits compelled them to take whatever steps
they felt were necessary to protect their interests.As
for Laurence, he could not forgive Bridget for the
humiliation of rejection, so he made his own plans for
revenge. But he could not have known that someone else
was planning a different kind of revenge, and that the
outcome would shake the very foundations of the Overmeer
family. The Blind Years, another of Catherine Cookson's
part-mysteries, part-love stories, once again displays
her consummate skill at portraying the nuances of family
conflict. |
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