The Orchid House (VIRAGO MODERN CLASSICS)

"The house was empty of men. It was a house of women, like the Maison Rose in the old days. Madam had said to me that the girls would bring life to the place. They had brought more than that - they had brought sons and torment and love complications beyond the endurance of an old dark-skinned Methodist like me."
Under the watchful gaze of their black nurse Lally, three white Creole girls grow up at Maison Rose on the Island of Dominica, with its glades of glittering live trees, flaring hibiscus and milky-scented frangipani. But this drowsy heat-drenched lushness conceals decay, and the orchid house echoes with the strange whispered secrets of their enclosed world. To survive, the girls must abandon their island of disease and beauty for the cold northern lands of England and America. Lally watches as they leave, one by one, and waits for their return. As return they must -- to their magic past, to the orchid house, and to the man whom all three sisters love.