In the Shadow of the Hill

The year is 1924 and in his ancestral seat of Lake House, Michael Summoner, Lord Granville, is dying. He has left his fortune and title to his eldest surviving son, Edward. At his bedside is his youngest son Simon, Simon's fiancée, Vanessa, and his daughter Deborah. Edward is down at the village pub with his friends getting drunk to celebrate his good fortune. The family doctor arrives and seeing that Michael is dying goes to tell Edward. Doctor Sinclair finds him on the verge of marrying Rachel Stevens, the daughter of a farm labourer on his father's estate. He has met her in the pub where she has been sitting alone. Unable to get Edward to change his mind, the doctor agrees to be a witness at their impromptu wedding. So begins a family saga in which an English aristocratic family finds itself at war, not only with itself but with elemental forces of destruction beyond its comprehension.