Four independent-minded sisters come of age in the early 1900s - and four interwoven novels tell their stories, each through a different sister's eyes. The year is 1910, and the four Purcell sisters have only each other. Their mother has died, leaving them orphans in a rambling country estate. But with the help of the Mackenzies - their guardian and his family, whom the sisters come to love in very different ways - Sarah, Frances, Julia, and Gwen...