England, 1918. Armistice Day should bring peace into Leonora's life.
Rather than secretly making cosmetics in her father's chemist shop to
sell to army nurses such as Joan, her adventurous Australian friend, Leo
hopes to now display her wares openly. Instead, Spanish flu arrives in
the village, claiming her father's life. Determined to start over, she
boards a ship to New York City. On the way she meets debonair department
store heir Everett Forsyth.... In Manhattan, Leo works hard to make her
cosmetics dream come true, but she's a woman alone with a small salary
and a society that deems make-up scandalous.
New York City, 1949. Everett's daughter, Alice, a promising ballerina,
receives a mysterious letter inviting her to star in a series of
advertisements for a cosmetics line. If she accepts she will be
immortalized like dancers such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and
Ginger Rogers. Why, then, are her parents so quick to forbid it?
Her Mother's Secret is the story of a brave young woman chasing a
dream in the face of society's disapproval.