The Keys to the Garden - Susan Sallis

Widowed Martha Moreton was a devoted mother to her only child, Lucy, and when Lucy married Len on a golden July day, Martha tried hard to make the best of things. Len was a good man who would make Lucy happy. They wouldn't be living too far away. And when the arrival of grandchildren was something she anticipated eagerly.

Unexpectedly, Len's job took the newly married couple overseas, where their first child was born. But sorrow, not joy, came with Dominic's birth. On their return, Lucy's best friend, Jennifer, as flighty as Lucy was conventional, was anxious to provide her own kind of consolidation ...

Martha, who was experiencing unlooked-for and at first unwelcomed changes in her own life, clung too fast to the material-bond that meant so much to herself and Lucy. Everything she had come to depend on was overturned, however, before Martha was able to find her own kind of happiness in a very different existence.

I enjoyed reading this although it was quite involved and I did have to keep checking who was who. It wove quite a web between the characters, something I am not sure would actually happen so intently in real life but seemed realistic in the novel.

A light read which was perfect for a weekend away.