<p>Laura Gethryn spends the first 7 years of her life in the shadow of the Black Mountains. Her horsey mother idolizes the absent soldier and his return a broken man, emasculated by the Great War, leaves them destined to remain the disappointed parents of a single girl child. Caught up in the dance of dysfunction that is their marriage, they hand over Laura's education to Mr Howells, a very different man to Gethryn. Welsh speaking, working-class ...