Set in Cornwall at the turn of the twentieth-century, Madeleine Brent's
first novel follows the fortunes of Cadi Tregaron, a sixteen year-old
fisherman's daughter. Happy in the small community of the coastal
village where she has spent her life, the only hint of disquiet has been
a recurring dream - of a great house standing in water and of a faceless
man who awaits her there - a dream which is sometimes wonderful and
sometimes terrifying. By a cruel blow Cadi is left alone in the world,
but she is taken into a wealthy family where she lives like a lady with
servants to wait upon her and is treated as one of the family. Too
self-reliant to be spoilt by this change in her fortunes, she is perhaps
too self-reliant for her own good, for at Meadhaven she finds mystery,
danger and a hidden enemy. Is it the wayward young Richard Morton? Or
the grey-eyed stranger who is forever watching her? Or is it Lucian
Farrel, her benefactor's maverick nephew, whose face now becomes the one
to haunt her dream. But the dream turns to nightmare, for she finds that
the house standing in water is a reality and that she is bound to it by
a freak of ancestry. Here, in the house of her dream and far from her
own country, Cadi comes to know heartbreak and grief, and learns the
frightening truth about herself and the hidden enemy who threatens her
life.
