First published 2019
Zohra Dasgupta delivers mail to a field outside Bromsgrove where two elderly brothers live in converted railway carriages. The men never speak to each other and receive no visitors. Then Zohra brings them a letter that changes everything. A woman writes claiming to be their sister, the one they believed was murdered fifty years ago. The brothers must confront whether this woman tells the truth or runs a cruel deception. If she really survived, what happened during those missing decades? Zohra carries her own burdens. Once bright and social, she now isolates herself from former classmates. Only Crispin, her relaxed friend from school, can draw her out. He recruits her help restoring an old railway line on his father's property. The project needs railway carriages, and Zohra knows where to find them. As past secrets surface and present lives intersect, the characters discover they can sometimes undo the damage of wrong choices.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Bromsgrove
Period: 20th-century
352 pages · Paperback · Sceptre