Family Business

’Readers who enjoyed Maggie Smith’s two volumes of memoirs, ’Arriving Where I Started’ and ’Miles To Go Before I Sleep’, will welcome her very first novel, published as she approached her ninety-third year... Set in Yorkshire, Massachusetts and upstate New York, the intriguing themes include a major family crisis, the challenges of female entrepreneurship and the effects - especially on men - of unresolved grief.

Juliet Kent runs a highly successful designer gallery, ’Crafters’ in Leeds. On holiday in New England, Juliet and her husband meet Elaine, an impressive young American ceramics designer and invite her and her partner to come to Yorkshire and visit the gallery. On their return home however, Juliet’s beloved father passes away after a short illness, forcing her mother to reveal a long-held family secret about the circumstances of Juliet’s birth.

Following the Americans’ visit, their reciprocal invitation to come to their home in Saratoga offers Juliet the perfect opportunity to delve deeper into her mother’s shattering revelation: but at what cost to her own family, and even her marriage?’