Reclusive aristocrat Lady Camilla Davenport lives in the faded grandeur of Hetsoe House, the family seat. Left with the crippling debts of her late American husband, and mourning the death of their son in the 1960s, when the young family lived in the United States for a short time, her days are dominated by a long-term mental illness.Her daughter, Lady Hattie-depleted and embittered from her role as sole carer for her mother-has defected to London to reinvent herself, and is in an unhappy marriage with a stockbroker who shuns his working class background. But when her child displays signs of autism and is bullied at school, she seeks refuge for the boy back at home. A close bond between grandmother and child baffles Hattie, as does a hint from a member of staff that she does not know the full story of her brother's death.Danny is shocked to discover that his wife is a titled heiress, sees the potential of the estate and sets about manipulating his eccentric mother in law into relinquishing control.The two women must work to reach a peaceable truce for the sake of the child. Now a parent herself, Hattie sees her mother through new eyes, and a rapprochement between them seems possible. Hattie uncovers the events that led to Lady Camilla's mental breakdown on her return from America: a secret that saw her caught up in a generation of mothers there who were cruelly blamed and labelled when they sought medical help and reassurance; a secret that fractured the Davenport family and the mother-daughter bond for thirty years.Parvenu compares the stigma attached to mental health difficulties by a previous generation with the relative openness of today: overplucked eyebrows, secrecy, blame and shame, versus happy pills, de rigueur counselling and today's understanding of genetics.
