Are we fated to follow in our parents' footsteps? Is what we experienced at home as children automatically transposed by us onto our own children? When do you break the chain? How do you stop personal history from repeating? These are just some of the questions the author tries to answer as she confronts the cancer that killed her mother in much the same way it threatens to kill her. But this is a book of therapy as well. We follow Julie, her husband and children through their journey into fear of the unknown, through diagnosis and missed diagnosis, through successful and not-so-successful operations. We watch her reaction to those miracle medicines that can destroy the patient even as they help cure her disease, and we see how alternative medicines and their practitioners touch her soul while helping her in her fight to reclaim her body.

In the seventh book in The Performers saga, it is 1873 and impoverished Sophie Lackland must marry if she is to escape a lifeof genteel poverty. Then comes a letter telling of the death of her step-grandmamma, and of a strange bequest which could make it possible for Sophie to fulfil her ambition to qualify as a physician. So Sophie sets off for London, to a new life, new career and Gilbert Stacey, who offers her charm, tenderness and excitement.