Nan comes under scrutiny during a family soirée and meets enigmatic curate Ralph Munro. Maria has a plan to give her purpose and help her shrug off her condemnation by the doctor.

For lovers of Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’...disease plunders a grim northern orphanage and Miss Temple is stuck in this story - until she’s not. Reader: she marries the excellent Reverend Nasmyth and with help from companion Nan Wilson, gets to write the pages of her own tale, an exorcism of the past and testimony of murder to come.