Blackthorn winter

Each April, when blackthorn blossom covers the hedges like a bridal veil, a cold snap or snowfall can arrive so hard that spring seems lost for good. Country folk call this a blackthorn winter. For Claudia Barron, the one that arrives this particular April matches the collapse of her life: the glitter of her old world, her financial safety, and her marriage. Her wealthy, influential husband has gone to prison, and she is left with no home and almost no money. She has no wish to hold on to what remains of that life, and no reason to stand by a man who has wronged her in nearly every way one person can wrong another.

Rather than stay, she slips away into hiding. She uses what little money she has to buy the only house within reach, a plain, unattractive bungalow tucked into an old kitchen garden in the Dorset village of Court Barton, and she takes a new name. Hoping to remain unnoticed, she looks for work at the village school. Villages, however, rarely tolerate a stranger who keeps to herself, and Claudia soon finds herself pulled into the gossip, the bickering, and the tangled romances and rivalries of village life in ways she never anticipated.