ABOUT
THE BOOK

For Madeleine McCarthy, high-spirited and eight years old, her family’s posting to a quiet air force base in Ontario is at first welcome, secure as she is in the love of her family, and unaware that her father, Jack, is caught up in his own web of secrets. The early sixties, a time of optimism infused with the excitement of the space race and overshadowed by the menace of the Cold War, is filtered through the rich imagination of a child as Madeleine draws us into her world.
But the base is host to some intriguing inhabitants, including the unconventional Froelich family, and the odd Mr. March whose power over the children is a secret burden that they carry. Then tragedy strikes, and a very local murder intersects with global forces, binding the participants for life. As the tension in the McCarthy’s household builds, Jack must decide where his loyalties lie, and Madeleine learns about the ambiguity of human morality – a lesson that will only become clear when the quest for truth, and the killer, is renewed twenty years later.