Act of will / Barbara Taylor Bradford. Bradford, Barbara Taylor, 1933-

Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, c1986.

343 p. ; 22 cm.

Set in the Yorkshire Dales, London, Paris and New York, amid the glittering worlds of art and haute couture, Act of Will takes the reader from 1926 to the present through the extraordinary odyssey of its heroines. There is Audra Kenton, a hospital nurse and later a children's nanny, for whom the years hold tormenting poverty and pain. Yet throughout them she will fight relentlessly to fulfill one ambition: to give her child the chance for success she could never have. Then there is Christina, Audra's brilliantly gifted daughter, who dreams of becoming an artist. But determined to repay her mother's sacrifice, she will make a commitment that forever alters her fate, bringing her great fame-and a special kind of heartache.