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Rob Dewar is driving home when he hears on the radio that his old friend and climbing partner, Jamie Matthewson, has fallen to his death on a daredevil solo climb. Although he not spoken to Jamie in many years, he turns his car around and heads to Wales to comfort Jamie's widow, Ruth. This is a detour that will take Rob on a journey back to the past, to his youth, and to his own obsessive climbing days, when he made the pivotal choices that now come back to haunt him. While unraveling the unanswered questions about Jamie's death, he confronts decades-old betrayals and lies. And it is the secrets about Jamie's life that lead Rob to the truth about his own mother's experiences in London before and during World War II.
Simon Mawer unveils the layers of history connecting a group of people intertwined over the years by love, competition, and lust. In the shadow of one love triangle is the story of another, and as we follow the characters from London during the Blitz to the mountain ranges of the Alps and back to present-day Wales, Mawer reveals how the agonies of the past weigh upon the present.
