Two very different women, from two very different backgrounds, leave Ireland for France to make their dreams come true.

Shona Fitzpatrick is bright and beautiful. Yet everything she touches seems to turn to dust. Her job is under threat and her boyfriend rejects her hopes for their life together. A future that once looked rosy now looks rocky.

Aileen Hegarty has, according to her decent but dull husband Joe, been watching too much television. That must be why she wants to uproot their family for a new life in an unknown country. But Aileen sees far more than fun and sun on her horizons: she sees a chance to heal her family of the wound that has been throbbing under its skin for sixteen years.

Shona and Aileen both need new lives. But can they help each other to get them?

''Liz Ryan understands not only a woman's heart but a woman's mind'' Terry Keane Sunday Times