A moving, resonant and haunting psychological suspense novel from an award-winning author. A lonely island off the northwest coast of America. A ruined folly. A woman's fight to reconstruct her life after the devastating loss of her husband and daughter. A threat from the past... Rae Newborn, shattered after a catastrophic nervous breakdown and an attempted rape, is left on a deserted island off the coast of Washington State. Her aim is single-handedly to rebuild a family house destroyed by fire back in the nineteen twenties. All she wants is to be left in peace, but memories and real life intrude. Her nights are haunted by ghosts from her past and fears that the monsters lying there will return; her days interrupted by unwelcome visits from the local police and a mysterious intruder. But her tranquillity is truly disturbed when she makes a discovery in the foundations of the house, one that throws a dark shadow over her whole family history. What really happened on the island eighty years ago? And what was the truth behind her great uncle's disappearance after his return, shell-shocked, from the trenches of the First World War? Violence comes down through the years to explode once again on the isolated island, this time threatening to destroy not just Rae but future generations as well...