Freya grew up in Caernoweth in Cornwall and loved the sea and her life there until one night she nearly drowned after going out looking for her father. Her father had an alcohol problem and Freya's mother had had enough and left him to go and live in London taking Freya with her until some years later she decides to move to America and so Freya returns to her father in Cornwall and helps her father in the shop Penhaligon's Attic

Anna Garvey needs to escape Ireland and flees with her daughter Mairead to Cornwall to take up her inheritance, the village inn. Initially she is viewed with suspicion, the locals sense that she is keeping secrets but she has no choice but to stay and try and make a go of it and things get easier when they discover who she is descended from and she and her daughter befriend Freya and her father

A great book of two family sagas intertwining and of the tough life in those days especially for the fishermen out at sea in all weathers and also shows how tight these communities could be although once accepted you had friends and support for life. I will be looking out for other books by this author