“The queen of historical fiction.” —The Guardian

For fans of Downton Abbey, Atonement and Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong, the powerful first novel in a series about a privileged British family whose idyllic world is shattered during the First World War

“Hard to put down. . . . Gripping, thoughtful, heartbreaking, and, above all, human.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

In the idyllic early summer of 1914, life is good for the de Witt family. Rudolf and Verena are planning their daughter Emmeline’s wedding, while their eldest son, Arthur, is studying in Paris, and Michael is back from his first term at Cambridge. Celia, the youngest de Witt, is on the brink of adulthood and secretly dreams of escaping her carefully mapped-out future.

But the onslaught of war changes everything, and the de Witts find themselves in danger of losing all they have. As Celia struggles to make sense of the changing world around her, she lies about her age to join the war effort and finds herself embroiled in a complex plot that puts not only her but those she loves in peril.

With cinematic scope and pitch-perfect detail, New York Times–bestselling author Kate Williams tells the unforgettable story of Celia and her family as they are shunned by a society that previously embraced them, torn apart by sorrow and buffeted and changed by the storms of war.