This was a pretty captivating story! My first by this author, but it won't be my last. The heart of the story is the story of a little girl who was "boarded out" in the 1920s. Boarded out means that the city of Glasgow would take the orphans of the city out to the remote Scottish islands and offer them to anyone who would take them in -- in reality, the bulk of them found themselves as unpaid child slaves, working on the farms. That boarded out little girl turns out to be the dark secret of one of Glasgow's most up-and-coming families -- a secret to even the family members themselves, bar one. So there is a mystery theme with a lot of social history in this well-written book. It was a quick but satisfying read!

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