Oh, this was a lovely story!
At the beginning there is Ellen, living in a small English village in 1940 trying to cope with various war evacuees. Ellen finds a motherless little girl called Pamela and takes the child in, although she has told her husband from the beginning of her marriage that she doesn't want children, knowing that he cannot physically father any. When her husband protests, Ellen explains slightly scornfully, "I don't want children. I want Pamela."
This story resonated with me a good deal. A mother's love is an amazing and fierce love, a very personal love of a particular human child. It doesn't matter how many children she has, a mother loves each one for him or herself. That is why it's ridiculous for people to say, in the terrible event of a loss, "Well, at least she has other children. She won't miss that one." But she will. She will always miss that one.
I'm getting a little maudlin with this description, but this book really affected me emotionally. It is not a war story, or a thriller, which I think maybe the negative reviewers I read on b&n.com were disappointed by. It's a life story instead. I loved it.
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