The Taggards and the Rowans had been friends for thirty years. Their children had grown up together, sharing the worries and hardships of life in a Durham mining village.

          When Ann Rowan and David Taggard decided to marry, everyone was delighted … except for Maggie Rowan. She was consumed with jealousy at her sister’s good fortune, for she was a thin, plain young woman, completely lacking in softness or warmth.

          But beneath Maggie’s forbidding exterior, she was consumed with a desire to love and be loved…