Description

The summer of 1924. A young poet takes his own life by the lake on the great English estate of Riverton. The only witnesses are sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford. In the fall of 1999, ninety-eight-year-old Grace Bradley, once a maid at Riverton, is visited by a young filmmaker who wants to make a movie about the poet's suicide and asks Grace to tell her what she knows. And Grace begins to remember. Stories of life and death, love and betrayal follow, secrets solved and unsolved, surprising events and unexpected twists and turns line up against the backdrop of two world wars and the seemingly uneventful life of an upper-class English family. A compelling plot set in the context of History, and a remarkable first novel whose well-deserved success instantly ranks the author among the best English-language writers.