The Leaping Flame

She wasn’t sad. Sad was the wrong word.  Sadness did not capture the pain when a whole life had collapsed. Not sad. But broken, dazed and utterly forsaken even for misery.

Home again after five years, in her quiet ancestral home in wartime England, Mona’s past comes back to her in poignant, agonizing memories, memories of an ecstatic, clandestine love affair. Despite her unhappiness, Mona affects everyone with whom she comes into contact. The parson, the doctor, the landgirl and Michael the local Squire, are all changed as if ignited by a living flame.


How a woman from the past threatens to destroy Mona’s healing heart and expose the secret she thought was buried forever, and how through physical suffering she has a final chance of real happiness, are all told in this passionate and dramatic story by Barbara Cartland.