From the acclaimed author of Corellis Mandolin, here is a sumptuous, sweeping, powerfully moving new novel about a British family whose lives and loves are indelibly shaped by the horrors of World War I and the hopes for its aftermath. In the brief golden years of the Edwardian era the McCosh sisters—Christabel, Ottilie, Rosie and Sophie—grow up in an idyllic household in the countryside south of London. On one side, their neighbors are the proper Pendennis family, recently arrived from Baltimore, whose close-in-age boys—Sidney, Albert and Ashbridge—shake their fathers hand at breakfast and address him as sir. On the other side is the Pitt family a resolutely French mother, a former navy captain father, and two brothers, Archie and Daniel, who are clearly going to grow up into a pair of daredevils and adventurers.
