In a secluded moorland cottage, a widow and her two children live in the shadow of their departed father, their days marked by quiet grief and unspoken longings. Maggie Browne watches as her mother reserves all affection for her brother Edward, while she is taught that a woman's highest calling is self-sacrifice. When new relationships arrive with the outside world, both children must confront the question of what they owe to themselves versus what they owe to one another. Gaskell writes with piercing tenderness about the devastating cost of putting oneself last, and the particular cruelty of a love that asks only one person to give up everything. The novel builds to a dramatic conclusion at sea that still resonates today. Often overlooked despite being a clear precursor to George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, this is Victorian fiction at its most emotionally honest about what families cost the people who make them.
