ABOUT
THE BOOK

In England to see his daughter, Susan, who is gravely ill, James Hillyer, a retired professor of Victorian literature, encounters by chance a man he once knew as a boy. Gabriel Fontaine, a rich and attractive American he met one summer holiday during the war, is a mercurial figure, badly crippled by polio. As an adolescent, James was both attracted to and repelled by Gabriel’s cocksure attitude and charm. He also fell hopelessly in love with Odette, a French–Canadian girl from the village, only to find himself in competition with the careless Gabriel.

Now, at this random meeting over six decades later – as he struggles with the terrible possibility that he could outlive his own daughter – James is asked by Gabriel to accompany him on a final, unthinkable journey. At last, James begins to see that all beginnings and endings are inexorably linked.