Bella Winter has hit a low. Homeless and jobless, she is the mother of a toddler by a man whose name she didnt quite catch, and her once pretty face is disfigured by the scar she acquired in a car accident. Friendless and without family, shes recently disentangled herself from a selfish and indifferent boyfriend and a cruel and indifferent mother. But she shares a quality common to Barbara Comynss other heroines: a bracingly unsentimental ability to carry on. Before too long, Bella has found not only a job but a vocation; not only a place to live but a home and a makeshift family. As Comynss novel progresses, the story echoes and inverts the Brothers Grimms macabre tale The Juniper Tree. Will Bellas hard-won restoration to life and love come at the cost of the happiness of others?