The Lost Traveller

The year is 1914. Fifteen-year-old Clara Batchelor returns from the regimented convent of her childhood, still in thrall to the benevolent authoritarianism of her father and the imperious affection of her dissatisfied mother. In this devout Catholic family Clara is "Daddy's girl," and their intese relationship makes impossible demands on a young girl unwillingly learning to be a woman. Against the background of a world at war, Clara experiences the vagaries of adolescence: its promise, its threat of change. Then, faced with the first tragedy of her adult life, she comes to realize that neither parents nor marriage nor her faith can protect her.