Chud Conduit, the wild, illegitimate grandson of Monument's most successful business woman and Jack Santry, the gentle Anglo-Irish heir to the estate on the hill, are unlikely friends. It is their love for Rosa, the beautiful daughter of the local bookmaker, that unites them; a passion that persists long after their adolescent idyll is cruelly shattered. On the Normandy beaches of D-day, a flip of a coin wins one of them Rosa's hand, the other Rosa's affection, sealing their destinies together over six decades, in love and war, through cowardice and bravery, adultery and murder.
A splendidly lush, richly eloquent chronicle of two intertwined careers in a changing Ireland, and of the women both men adore.
