1933. Sixteen-year-old Alice Edevane is preparing for her family's Midsummer Eve party at their country home, Loeanneth, in Cornwall. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night sky, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great that they leave Loeanneth forever. Seventy years later, Detective Sadie Sparrow is sent on an enforced break from her job with the Metropolitan Police after a particularly troubling case.
She retreats to her grandfather's cottage in Cornwall, but soon stumbles upon an abandoned house and the story of a baby boy who disappeared without trace. Meanwhile, in her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, now an old lady, leads a life as carefully planned as the bestselling novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about the Edevane family's past, seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to bury.
1933. Sixteen-year-old Alice Edevane is preparing for her family's Midsummer Eve party at their country home, Loeanneth, in Cornwall. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night sky, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great that they leave Loeanneth forever. Seventy years later, Detective Sadie Sparrow is sent on an enforced break from her job with the Metropolitan Police after a particularly troubling case.
She retreats to her grandfather's cottage in Cornwall, but soon stumbles upon an abandoned house and the story of a baby boy who disappeared without trace. Meanwhile, in her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, now an old lady, leads a life as carefully planned as the bestselling novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about the Edevane family's past, seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to bury.
