They were beauties all right, them Roper girls - but sometimes even four aces don't make a winning hand.

In an unsettled household in the 1950s, how will the sisters come up from their shipwrecked childhood? Facing issues including domestic and sexual abuse, physical and mental illness, they struggle to offer their own children a better legacy. Follow them over sixty years to see if all the siblings make it safely to shore.

Angela: Whatever rumours you may have heard, I never knew Dad say my third sister Karen wasn't his.

Janet: She had promised that on her sixteenth birthday she would finally let him go all the way.

Lucy: I think Jan was away at a Guides' camp when I got run over.

Karen: Don't think I'll be rambling on like Ange ... I wouldn't want to leave you only her version, talk about unreliable memoirs.

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