"So sweet our youth . . . so good the years between, with love and heartache."

The poignant poem opening Part One (Alicia) of TRACES OF DREAMS, is the novel in a nutshell, thesis of this lyrical story spanning World War I through 1993. Alicia Martin is nineteen in 1914, the older of two daughters living with their father in a "dilapidated house" in London. Her infatuation with handsome Arthur Bell, sets the novel on its inexorable course. Like countless young women before and after, Alicia consents to an evening of passion with Arthur on the eve of his induction into the military. When Alicia realizes she's pregnant, we know as surely as page 10 follows page 9, Arthur will be killed in the war.

If you think this is a predictable novel, however, you will miss not only a sweeping story of joy and sorrow, triumph and tragedy, but also an amazing overview of the century seen through a family saga. Alicia's marriage to staid Matthew Reed is more desperation than love, while her sister Fiona's marriage to a wealthy, handsome young man appears a far better fate. Appearances are deceiving, however, in marriages as well as in novels. Alicia's marriage deepens to true love while Fiona's disintegrates into a sham. We watch Matthew and Alicia's ten children grow up, witness the struggles of a family with never quite enough money, see what women's lives were before birth control and confront the way the world has changed. Then Tricia McGill draws us into Part II (Sara), the story of Alicia's beautiful, spirited daughter, so like her mother, yet so different, evoking the adage, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

TRACES OF DREAMS moves into the World War II era and the lives of Alicia's children with the birth of Sara's daughter, after a night of passion with her own doomed young man, a mirror of her mother's early years. From a terrible marriage, to her escape to Australia and ultimate happiness a lifetime later, Sara is as much a product of the second half of the century as her mother was a product of the first half. And yet, the lives of the two women, their men and their children revolve around the same basic human need to love and be loved that is a universal fact of life as well as the thread running through and binding this novel.

Tricia McGill takes a bold step into mainstream fiction with TRACES OF DREAMS, a book that flows like a gentle stream on the surface, but conceals a strong undercurrent and unexpected depths.