Pentaptych

""Griffin Stoddard, a long-time admirer of Cranford author, Mrs Gaskell, chances upon her work called We Five. He comes to learn that the novel - unpublished in her lifetime - was subsequently adapted by three other writers. Stoddard draws together the four versions and writes his own to complement them. The result is a novel which spans five different historical periods - a small mill town near Manchester in 1859, San Francisco in the days before the 1906 earthquake, the fictional Zenith, Winnemac of 1923, autumn in 1940's war torn London and a small town in Northern Mississippi in 1997 - and follows five childhood friends - Ruth, Jane, Molly, Maggie and Carrie - their encounters with five young men of differing intentions, the girls' respective families together with their ever-changing occupations and exploits, concluding with an explosive unification of all five stories."