A darkly compelling love story and a fantastically detailed portrait of small-town life, rife with gossip, tensions and murky pasts.March returns to her childhood home with her teenage daughter, Gwen, to attend the funeral of the housekeeper who brought her up. Unexpectedly, though, the visit rekindles in March a passion for an earlier unrequited love. Overwhelmed by her emotions, she abandons her marriage and life commitments in pursuit of the affair. But her lover is a man of strange secrets with a violent streak, and she soon discovers him to be a Bluebeard with a sinister collection...‘Hoffman is shrewd and witty about the networks of gossip and affection in town, and she evokes place superbly... spellbinding' Sunday Times
