Una Vane whose widowed mother runs a hairdressing salon in her front room (Maison Vane Glory - Where Permanent Waves are Permanent), goes bicycling with Ray, the boy who delivers the fish. Hetty Fallowes struggles to become independent of her possessive, loving, tactless mother. And Lise-Lotte Klein, the German girl who had arrived in 1939 on a train from Hamburg, uncovers tragedy in the past and magic in the present. The Flight Of The Maidens is peopled with extraordinary characters, who are evoked with all the humour, compassion and eye for detail that mark Jane Gardam as one of Britain's most gifted and original novelists.