Clare Chambers

London, 1957. Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and living a limited existence with her truculent mother. When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely intertwined with that of the Tilburys: Gretchen is now a friend, and her Margaret a sort of surrogate child. And Jean doesn't mean to fall in love with Gretchen's husband. The story that Jean is researching for the newspaper seems to be causing dark ripples across all their lives.

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