by Charlotte Vale Allen

The neglected adopted child of an invalid mother and her devoted husband, Lisa Hamilton has grown up isolated, her one true love being her music.

Most of the time, life is incomprehensible to Lisa. She is quietly alienated, becoming more and more lost to the only thing that makes sense to her: the music she hears in her head, and that she discovers she can perform to great public approval.

Leaving home as a teenager to go on the road, Lisa becomes a vagabond troubador, singing in clubs, making love to lonely men; with no real life. Until the terrible assault by the man she'd elected to protect her results in a pregnancy. And suddenly there is within her grasp the possibility of the one thing she's never had: a family.

Working at a luxury hotel in the Bahamas, Lisa begins, at last, to consider her life and her future, and decides she must now, finally, begin to take care of herself; to make plans. And then, Chas Clayton arrives to offer her the chance not only to have a recording career, but to complete the family portrait she has begun mentally to paint.

Published by Island Nation Press