This novel is about identity, belonging, and voicelessness. It explores the concept of bravery, and shows how heroism can come in many forms.
What can one do when faced with circumstances beyond one's control, when everything seems to conspire to entrap? When there's no way out? How can anyone find a voice when history, guilt, family and circumstance have taken it away?
Jean, a post-traumatic survivor of the Somme, is trapped by his Québecois accent, which would betray his desertion and compromise his rescuer, Marie, a refugee from the front line. Katarin, a journalism student in London, on a Joint Study Programme from Brittany, is trapped by her writing expertise and her intractable stammer, until Jamie, a shy young man from a West End theatre crew, befriends her.
This startling debut novel, a multi-generational historical fiction, an extended family saga, and a recent Finalist in the Pen Masters Global Literary Awards for Literary Excellence, grapples with a desperate sense of inevitability, while showing that bravery may sometimes be exhibited in unexpected ways.