Book Description

When their businessman father dies suddenly, leaving his affairs in disarray and his family in dire financial straits, it seems that sisters Charlotte and Victoria have little choice but to accept the support offered by their stuffy, authoritarian Uncle Edward. But their mother has other ideas and, defying convention, she chooses to provide her daughters with careers. The girls' drapery business prospers but there is a price to pay for their independence. They have severely compromised their marriageability. Vicky's reckless attempts at romance end in disaster whilst Charlotte, outwardly more content with her lot, suffers behind the walls of her self-control, silently repressing her need for a man's love and enduring the fact that although she would have loved to have a child, she never will. But the twentieth century brings changes and, by an ironic twist of fate, Charlotte and Vicky find themselves guardians of their great-niece Paula, the granddaughter of a long-dead airman around whom Charlotte had, long ago, built groundless dreams. Like her grandfather, Paula is fascinated by flying and unlike her great-aunt, her romance with an airman blossoms and results in marriage. But when tragedy threatens from an unexpected quarter it is to her great-aunts that she turns—to Vicky for comfort but to Charlotte for the strength to go on into the future, and Charlotte, though she is now on the eve of her hundredth birthday, does not fail her. A moving, deeply felt novel, THE DOWERLESS SISTERS is an unforgettable chronicle of a life lived through a century of enormous change. THE DOWERLESS SISTERS is the final book in this epic series. The Dowerless Sisters An unforgettable chronicle of a century of change