Joan, once-passionate and creative, is now trapped in an expensive care home, seeking comfort in the richer worlds of the past and her own mind. Eloise, her daughter, is a relentlessly disciplined businesswoman, torn between guilt and filial responsibility, who has gambled everything on a chance remark made by her old lover. Moving between 19th-century England and South Africa, war-time Paris and 21st-century London, this is a stunningly-written novel about family, history and duty.