A daughter of the manse, a good plain cook, sober, as she says, and honest, Hagar is the perfect housekeeper and she is many other things as well. She is a girl, once beautiful, whose face and heart have been scarred - but have mended better than she realises, and who can follow with courage and good humour her father's dictum 'Thou must not fear life'. It is this, in fact, which makes her accept Mr. Peregrine's unusually worded offer, going off boldly, alone in the world, to work in a household inhabited, her employer tells her, by 'seven devils'.
In this delightful novel Anne Hepple tells of Hagar Thorne's life with the Peregrines, a family of uncon-ventional, high-spirited young girls, each of whom has her own hopes, fears, and heartaches, and each of whom works out in her own way her individual drama. A drama in which Hagar, from her regard for them, feels herself deeply involved. But it also Hagar's own story, for she, like the gentle Marion, the fragile Penny, the sharp-tongued Rachel, hears the piper in the wind who pipes always when something is going to happen. And, like them, she falls in love. Readers will be moved by this novel which is at once shrewd, humorous and tenderhearted.