The Valentine House

In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants and picked, it is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eye.

For Mathilde it is the start of a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people, far removed from the hard grind of farming. Initially befriended by Sir Anthony's granddaughter, Mathilde suffers a bitter betrayal and for decades keeps her distance. Only in middle-age, as a new crop of Valentine children fills the chalet, does she return. It is then she discovers a long-buried family secret, which later becomes vital: in 1976, when developers threaten to invade her valley and Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to spend the summer, bringing his own mystery to solve.

Dramatically evoking the beauty of its setting, this finely wrought and intriguing novel connects love and land, language and identity in a tale of one family through the generations and their impact on a woman and a place they become entwined with: two cultures seemingly worlds apart, meeting at the most fundamental human level.