The sins of the fathers

Jennifer Michelson is an artist living in Exeter when she receives an unexpected inheritance in the form of an old farmhouse in a village on Dartmoor, left to her by her aunt and uncle. Despite her misgivings about leaving her relatively settled life, she moves into Carew House where she discovers that her aunt and uncle lived with two resident ghosts. Partly through her aunt's journal detailing her life and experience in the house following World War Two and partly through her own developing relationship with one of these ghosts and other people living in the village of Carborough, Jennifer attempts to unravel the story of the events which took place in Carew House in the years following the First World War. What she finds is a history of a dysfunctional family, the Jensens, who seemingly lost members during and after that war. But is everything as it seems in the story of the Jensen family? Aided by the wife of the local vicar, Jennifer uncovers a deceit which involved a number of 'respectable' figures in the community and comes to threaten the life she has begun to carve out for herself.