It is 1968 and Flixe Suvarov, recently widowed and frighteningly short of money, is struggling to come to terms with her new life. Running a small party-planning business as she nurses a potential political career, she does everything she can to keep her family together.

Andrew, her elder son, has fallen in love with her goddaughter, the beautiful, capricious Amanda Wallington. But Amanda is involved with people whose backgrounds are intimately - and unhappily - linked with those of her mother, Julia, and Flixe. They have no idea just how intimate Amanda has become with her new friends - and Amanda cannot even guess how their pas could damage her future.

It is only as Flixe emerges from her shell of unhappiness and finds her own life miraculously transformed that she begins to understand what threatens them all . . .

The final volume in The Threaded Dances series. Read more Daphne Wright in The Longest Winter.