Alison Bliss, world-famous model and author or critically acclaimed 'Sweet Susan', walks into the sea on a "bluethroat morning". She becomes a greater icon in death than in life and the Norfolk village of Glaven, where she spent her final days, is soon a place of pilgrimage. Six years later, her husband Harry is still haunted by her suicide until he gets involved with nineteen-year-old Helen. Propelled by their affair, Harry returns with Helen to the scene of his wife's death. There they meet ninety-eight year old Ern Higham who holds the key to Alison's death. Erne tells them a story that stretches beyond Alison and that has been generations in the making.
As he pieces together the past and confronts his own pain, Harry discovers that he must relive history to truly understand it. Jacqui Lofthouse has written a subtle mystery layered with literary resonances, and the brooding atmosphere of the Norfolk landscape.
