The country estate of Tyringham Park is the epitome of wealth and privilege. Home to the Blackshaws, it finds itself the backdrop to tragedy. The country estate of Tyringham Park is the epitomeof wealth and privilege. Home to the Blackshaws, it finds itself the backdrop to tragedy. It is a beautiful day in 1917, and Tyringham Park is in an uproar after Victoria Blackshaw, an innocent toddler, disappears without a trace. The feverish search for Victoria soon uncovers jealousies and deceits that both the upstairs and downstairs inhabitants of the grand estate have fought for years to keep hidden. As time passes, Victoria’s disappearance casts a long shadow over all of their lives. Charlotte, the Blackshaws’ less-favored eight-year-old daughter, finds herself severely impacted by the loss of her sister. Charlotte’s greatest wish is to escape the con­fines of the estate, but Tyringham Park and its many mysteries may never release their hold on her. Like all those at Tyringham Park, she is caught in a web of passions and secrets, trysts and betrayals that seems to ensnare everyone connected to this once great house.

An admirable doctor in charge of a small, isolated hospital in outback Australia swaps his wife’s second stillborn baby for an identical twin born to an impoverished farmer’s wife who already has seven other children. Both mothers are unaware of the deception. Only one person, apart from the doctor, knows what happened, but no one believes him as he is considered to be mentally deficient. The doctor leaves for Ireland immediately afterwards so that his crime, committed on impulse, will remain undetected. The stolen twin is destined for a future of privilege as the heir to her aristocratic mother’s wealth and status, while her sister in Australia faces a life of hardship and loneliness. The differing fortunes of the twins, the doctor’s guilty conscience, the burden of the man who knows, the jealousy of an older sister, the fate of the mothers and the ambitions of the older generation, all combine to create conflict that compels the action forward throughout the novel until it reaches a dramatic and explosive climax.

27 hikes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Complete with elevation profiles, topo maps, itineraries.