In the 1950s and 60s, living with family secrets was nearly mandatory for women in high society. Charlotte Wellington and her daughter, Caroline, are no exception. When Charlotte s husband, John, begins showing signs of alcoholism, Charlotte prays that she won t have to go through life with her husband as she had with her alcoholic father. She quickly makes John promise that he won t drink anymore. Unfortunately, it s a promise that John can t or won t keep.

As Caroline grows up watching her mother have accident after accident, she knows that she will never let a man treat her the way her father treats her mother. But when tragedy strikes, Charlotte and Caroline must pick up the pieces and put their lives back together. As Caroline moves on to college, life continues as she blossoms into womanhood.

Follow this mother and daughter through all seasons of life from birth and death to love and loss and dark family secrets over a period of fifty-two years, and learn how one family tries to make the best out of a tragic situation in "A Season for Living."

Thomas Fletcher first sees her in 1916, at a drug store in Birmingham, Alabama. He doesn't know her, but her brown hair and beautiful eyes captivate him. He soon learns her name-Juliette Wilcox-and she would learn his. Their attraction cannot be denied, but something stands in their way.

Thomas is a drafted soldier, about to be sent to Europe to fight in the dreaded World War I. Although Juliette begs for them to be married before he goes to boot camp, he doesn't want to leave her a widow. Their letters will keep them close. Letters are all they will have until he returns from the battlefield-hopefully, alive.

For the next four years, letters arrive from far off France and Germany to Juliette's front porch in Alabama. For the next four years, their love grows, develops, and increases. Even so, war is a dark force, and many men never return. Will Thomas be one of the soldiers lost, or will he come home and make Juliette's dreams of marriage a happy reality?

When Henry O'Toole escapes the Irish famine and sails to America, he doesn't expect the anti-Irish prejudices that await him. Determined never to starve again, he changes his name to Henry Taylor to secure a job and safeguard his future. Traveling south to Virginia, he meets Sarah, a slave woman torn from her family and sold to another plantation. There she must navigate the power system of the white masters, as well as the hierarchy of her fellow slaves.Even though Henry's white skin represents the oppression Sarah suffers under, and even though having Sarah at his side would force Henry to abandon his hopes of prosperity, their attraction is undeniable and they fall in love. But in 1849 on a Virginian plantation, inter-racial marriage is not only illegal but considered to be an ungodly abomination. No matter how much they want to be together, Sarah is trapped on Jubilee Plantation, owned by another man. This is a love story of epic proportions - a forbidden relationship that has been forged in secrecy, and faces betrayal and jeopardy at every turn.

A patriotic young woman . . . A dangerously exhilarating young aristocrat . . . A scandalous secret . . . Meggie Elliot is a young woman of above average intelligence, and on the brink of adulthood. Living with her aunt and uncle in London at the outbreak of World War 2 she's intent on going to university, then pursuing a career in law. She is encouraged in this by her solicitor - a man she admires a little too much. Too old for her, he lets her know it. Meggie follows her dream as best she can, knowing it's unlikely it will ever come to fruition. In a burst of patriotism she joins the WRNS to do her bit for the war effort. Sent to work in a decoding unit she meets the dangerously exhilarating young aristocrat, Nicholas Cowan, who sweeps her off her feet. But Meggie suspects Nick of being the man who burgled her aunt's home, and to expose him would ruin a lot of lives. Against all reason Meggie and Nick begin to fall in love .