Summary: FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING 'Bittersweet ... dazzling' Guardian 'Deeply pleasurable ... the ending made me cry' The Times 'Told with a wealth of detail and narrative intensity' Penelope Lively Violet is 38. The First World War took everything from her. Her brother, her fiancé – and her future. She is now considered a 'surplus woman'. But Violet is also fiercely independent and determined. Escaping her suffocating mother, she moves to Winchester to start a new life –a change that will require courage, resilience and acts of quiet rebellion. And when whispers of another world war surface, she must live with a secret that could change everything...