In a rather radical departure from the style for which she is famous, Barbara Cartland brings us the gritty and heart-rending rags to riches and romance tale of beautiful young Belinda ‘Linda’ Snell, whose adventures take her careering from lowly theatrical beginnings via a Convent school to the West End stage and the dizzy heights of the Paris fashion scene. Although her mother was in the theatre, performing in an acrobatic troupe with her sleazily likeable partner Alfred with his ‘long, waxed moustache and conquering air’, it’s said that Linda’s unknown father was a ‘gentleman’. And throughout her rollercoaster ride of a life, perhaps it’s her genteel origins she craves as much as love, which seems to slip tantalisingly through her fingers every time it’s within her ever more desperate clutches.
Pursued by all the wrong men and eluded by the right ones, no sooner has she fallen in love with world famous aviator Harry, than he’s killed in his latest daring mission and her young friend Bessie dies horribly after her ‘gentleman’ ‘got her into trouble’… Even when in desperation she marries the wrong man for all the wrong reasons and finally becomes Lady Glaxly, love and happiness are still forlorn and distant dreams… Until one unlikely man holds out the hope that Linda will finally find a true and lasting love.