Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel (Eurasia) and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Best Novel Award.

A childhood mystery has haunted James Oakley all his life: the disappearance and unexplained death of his mother far away in India. Years later, in an attempt to unlock the past, he returns with his unhappy wife Daisy to the islands where he was born, a place of treacherous seas and hurricanes, which conceals an appalling secret.