Thirza Caruthers has never forgotten the wild rivers of the Dordogne in France. As a child, she nearly drowned there.
Now, in a debt that stretches back decades, she must repay the woman who saved her, by going to nurse the elderly Berenice Rousseau at her beautiful stone manor house in the beautiful French countryside. Berenice is drifting in and out of consciousness but the one constant is her desire to see her missing daughter again, Sophie, who ran away as a child. Can Thirza help her?
But with the Spanish Civil War erupting just across the border, fascism taking hold in Italy and Germany and her stepdaughter volunteering on the front line - can Thirza really help Berenice solve the mysteries of the past and find out what happened to the elusive Sophie?
