First published 2011
George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance home for a weekend in 1913. Cecil is everything George admires: handsome, aristocratic, and a gifted poet who speaks casually of his grand estate, Corley Court. George's sixteen-year-old sister Daphne falls under Cecil's spell just as completely. When Cecil inscribes a poem in Daphne's autograph album, none of them can foresee how those verses will reshape their lives. Cecil dies in the Great War, and his reputation grows. The poem becomes famous throughout England, recited by schoolchildren everywhere. A romantic legend builds around the verses, but the real story remains hidden. Decades pass. The families carry their secrets forward through the years. Then an ambitious biographer arrives, determined to uncover the truth behind the celebrated poem. As he digs deeper, he threatens to expose what really happened that long-ago weekend. The investigation forces a reckoning with desire, memory, and the stories people tell themselves about love.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, british-literature, family-drama, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Corley Court
Period: 1913
435 pages · Hardcover · Knopf