Cider and Schnapps

Who is truly free?

Katherine Carter believes she is. With all her life spent on her father's Herefordshire farm, her future seems mapped out - until she meets Karl.

Karl Driesler has little freedom. His future is bleak. Still a prisoner of war eighteen months after Germany's surrender, he suffers nightmares, and his fiancée has just married another man.

Robert Murdoch, the village doctor's son, also suffers nightmares. A former prisoner of the Japanese, he finds freedom unexpectedly hard to cope with - until he meets Karl.

These three find their growing bonds of friendship and love tested to the full as Karl's past catches up with him. Denied the freedom to love, Karl's world is shattered, while Katherine's is thrown into turmoil.

This is Caron Harrison's debut novel, originally published in 1997 under the title of 'Shades of Grey'.