When the Birds Begin to Sing

Eleanor Grebby feeds chickens, keeps house and teaches Sunday school, but she longs for the excitement of singing before a London audience. When Philip Roche joins a children's game in the countryside, their playful meeting leads to a conversation in a barn during a summer shower. His money and experience attract her curiosity, while her lively manner offers a change from his round of dinners, friends and travel. Their talk exposes the distance between the life she imagines and the world he knows.

Winifred Graham's novel follows these early sparks of attraction into questions of marriage, loyalty and social judgment. A later encounter places Eleanor opposite an outspoken stranger who notices her distress over another man's photograph. The woman's account of an unhappy marriage gives the conversation an urgent, cautionary edge. Readers interested in nineteenth-century romantic fiction will find flirtatious dialogue alongside a sterner concern with private longing and its public consequences.