Scottish soldier Robert Stewart and Charlotte Roussard, a French young woman, meet shortly before the start of the Second World War. A gifted piano prodigy, Charlotte is attending the Paris Conservatory of Music. It was love at first sight for him. After a brief courtship, they cross her parents, marry and move to Canada.

During Robert's employment on the Alcan Highway during the war, Charlotte bears him two sons and a daughter. At war's end, Robert hires on with a railroad and moves his family to San Luis Obispo, CA. Depressed by the weather, the responsibility of marriage and motherhood, Charlotte begins to lose touch with reality. Upon the death of her mother, Charlotte's father asks that his daughter return to France to care for him. Against Robert's protests, Charlotte returns to France while Robert remains at his job in California.

Their decisions thrust their children into a life of insecurity, unacceptance and anger at their absent father. Phillip, the oldest child, becomes the man of the family as his mother slowly slips into a land of make believe. Is Phillip up to task?

When his grandfather passes away, Charlotte is institutionalized leaving fourteen year old Phillip to deal with a disinherited uncle, a self-righteous church and an exploitive bureaucracy that separates the children by farming them out as menial workers. Upset at the separation, Phillip's anger toward his father grows deeper each day.

Does the father ever learn of his wife's mental collapse, that his children have been separated and placed in the service of strangers? Does Phillip mange to reunite with his siblings? At what cost?

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• Literature & Fiction

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• Print Length: 182 Pages
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