Promises — Catherine Gaskin

Magnificent saga of a woman's promise and the passion, tragedy and triumph that it brings. Black Jack Pollock inherited a fortune and married a beautiful, wild aristocrat. Shrewd, tough and unscrupulous, he was the last man to take pity on the bedraggled waif who was crushed beneath his carriage wheels. He took her home to Pelham Langley, his great house on the Yorkshire Moors. He named her Lally Leeds and she became the cornerstone of his motherless family. She was companion and friend to the lovely, willful Margaret; she was the kindest support to the enchanting but handicapped Alice; and she was the greatest admirer of the beloved Jon - Black Jack's son and heir. Throughout the sunlit summer of 1914 the gilded Pollock family were the toast of the town. Only Lally felt unattractive and without a name - the ugly duckling. World War 1 took the young men off to the trenches. It took Lally too, crushed but unsurprised by Jon's marriage, off to France as a VAD. It was she who first met Brock Weymouth, the dark stranger who was to play such a vital role in the Pollock family's affairs - a man with as little right to his name as Lally had to hers. PROMISES sweeps from the agonies of World War 1 to the Jazz Age that followed, from the parties and rich life of Long Island society to the severity and bitterness of the Depression, through the tragedy and disaster to the ultimate and unexpected triumph and the new destiny of Pelham Langley.