From the late nineteenth century to the 1920's, from Kwangtung, China to Wellington and Dunedin and the Battlefields of the Western Front - a story of two families.Yung faces a new land that does not welcome the Chinese. Alone, Katherine struggles to raise her children and find her place in the world.In a climate of hostility towards the foreign newcomers, Katherine and Yung embark on a poignant and far-reaching love affair.
In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy. Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. And then Gilly appears.