‘Don’t die out there! Don’t die, Ned. I’d be so frightened and alone without you!’
For Meriel the prospect of life without her husband, if he should die in Flanders, is simply unendurable.
From the parched landscapes of Queensland and the Andes to the chalky scarps of the Sussex downs; from the Victorian heyday through the cataclysm of the First War to the uncertain new world of the nineteen twenties, the novel follows the lives of two very different women who have dared to flout the rules of their society, and those of of the men they choose – the double strands of a remarkable love story with a heart-stopping double-twist in the tail that makes it unforgettable.