As the Great War winds down, nurse Bess Crawford meets Captain Alan Travis from Barbados. Disoriented from a head wound, he insists that his English cousin, Lieutenant James Travis, shot him. After another injury Alan again accuses James, even though he couldn't be the culprit, leaving the Captain's sanity in doubt. When Bess finds him strapped down with a third injury, however, she and Sergeant Major Simon Brandon travel to the Travis home in Suffolk to learn more about the baffling relationship between these kinsmen. In her ninth mystery (following The Shattered Tree), Bess comes face to face with the invisible wounds of war that not even peace can heal.

"A superb whodunit—just when you think you have it figured out, [Charles] Todd throws a curve—and a moving evocation of a world at war."—Richmond Times-Dispatch