Plot
In the summer of 1899, Olympia Biddeford, a privileged, intelligent 15-year-old, and her parents have retired from the heat of Boston to the coastal resort of Fortune's Rocks. When the successful Dr. John Haskell is invited to stay, no one foresees the affair that is to follow between her and this 41-year-old man. Their passionate affair, and subsequent discovery, produce a son and leads to far-reaching consequences that span several decades. Olympia's son is taken from her immediately at birth, and despite attending a women's college she is miserable and only thinks of Haskell and her son, escaping back to the cottage at Fortune's Rocks. Here she learns of her son, Pierre Haskall, who is now three and adopted into a loving French family. In her pursuit of her child's custody, she employs Mr Tucker as a lawyer, yet realises when she wins the court case that she cannot bear to take a child from its adoptive mother. In the months that follow, Olympia transforms the Fortune's Rocks residence into a shelter for disadvantaged women, similar to her own experiences, and marries Haskell. In the ending, it is found that her son's adoptive parent has passed and she is to decide what happens to the child.
The novel is loosely based on the seaside neighborhood of Fortunes Rocks, located in Biddeford, Maine.
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