Book description
How should Mabel Herring, governess and heroine of this intriguing novel, be regarded? Is she a saint or a devil? Did she manage, against considerable odds, to hold the Lane-Baker family together for many years, or was she the instrument of its destruction?
Mabel is engaged as governess by Eleanor Lane-Baker in the summer of 1918, and her appointment is itself the conclusion of a battle between Eleanor and her husband, Edward. The couple have six children and for this growing, pleasant, middle-class family Miss Herring, so calm and competent, seems the ideal companion. Yet from the start, Eleanor has her misgivings. She has the uneasy feeling that she engaged Miss Herring against her better judgement because of some inexplicable power.
But is it really this which causes the destruction of the family, and is it based on reality or a distortion?
