This romantic melodrama, set in an Irish seaside town in the Fifties and early Sixties, is as wholesome and engaging as the author s first novel, Light a Penny Candle ( LJ 2/15/83). Memorable characters include a poor shopkeeper s daughter who wins a university scholarship, only to miss final exams by a cruel twist of fate; a medical student who shocks his family by marrying ``beneath him ; a lonely schoolteacher who guards two scandalous secrets about her local celebrity brother; and a kindly, ubiquitous priest who knows all, tells nothing, and holds everyone together. It s a little slow to get into, but by the halfway mark the reader is fully involved in all the subplots and is turning pages nonstop. Recommended for most public libraries and for YA collections. Literary Guild alternate. Joyce Smothers, Ocean Cty. Lib., Toms River, N.J.