"A Penguin readers guide to Maisie Dobbs" p. [1]-15.

"She started as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, Lady Rowan Compton, a suffragette, took the remarkably bright youngster under her wing and became her patron, aided by Maurice Blanche, a friend often retained as an investigator by the elite of Europe. It was he who first recognized Maisie's intuitive gifts and helped her to earn admission to prestigious Girton College at Cambridge where Maisie planned to complete her education." "The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie trained as a nurse, then left for France to serve at the Front, where she found - and lost - an important part of herself." "Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but reveals something very different. In the aftermath of the Great War, a former officer has founded a convalescent refuge for those grievously wounded, ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. It is a working farm known as The Retreat. When Fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat she must confront the ghost that has haunted her for over ten years."--BOOK JACKET.