Dora Simon is comfortable in her retirement, indulging her interests in gardening and music. Joe O’Cleary is content on the Jersey farm he helped rebuild with its owner, Geoffrey Laurent, with time to pursue his life-long hobby of birdwatching. But their worlds are shattered by the arrival of Barbara Hummel, a young German anxious to track down the identity of a mysterious woman whose photograph she found among her mother’s possessions.
Forced to resurrect long-buried secrets, and confront a past they never thought they would revisit, Dora and Joe’s lives unravel – and entwine - in shocking and surprising ways. Trapped in the Channel Islands under the German occupation in the Second World War, Dora, a Jewish refugee, conceals her identity; Joe, a Catholic priest, conceals a secret. The consequences of the lies both are forced to live are as unexpected as they are devastating.
This is a heart rending and provocative story of love and betrayal, shame and survival, casting light into the forgotten or unknown shadows of war.