Charlie Bright

San Francisco, 1947: Twenty-seven-year-old British war bride Charlie Bright has been abandoned by her beloved American husband, Mike--and she is puzzled. Not only did he vanish without a word, but unsavory characters have been turning up on the doorstep demanding to collect on Mike's debts, or else.

But Charlie, a WWII veteran of the women's Auxiliary Territorial Service and the daughter of a London policeman, is no shrinking violet. To stay afloat, she finds a job working as secretary to a genial San Francisco private investigator, and embarks on a quest to find out what has happened to the kind, charismatic Mike. When her probe leads to the sprawling Santa Clara Valley, a scenic paradise south of the City, so stunning it was known in the Bay Area as the "Valley of the Heart's Delight," she witnesses new industries and other powerful forces muscling out family farms and businesses.

With the steadfast help of her two best friends and PI boss, Charlie confronts the powers that be, stirring up trouble with a rogues' gallery of corrupt police, real estate sharks, journalists, socialites, adulterers and mobsters.

Not far into the future, the Valley of the Heart's Delight will be known as Silicon Valley, and Jacqueline Winspear puts us right there at its shadowy birth. A tour-de-force inspired by real events, Charlie Bright is most of all a gripping tale of a powerful heroine demanding, and finding, justice.