When the sixty-five-year-old Handel's journey through Holland is interrupted by a road accident, he is nursed back to health by a hermit and a servant girl who both have deeply troubled lives. He embarks on an inner journey, recalling musical triumphs and failures, dreaming of his past loves, facing up to his faults of character and asking himself questions: why has he chosen Britain as his home? Why does he feel compelled to compose his final oratorio, Jeptha, in a race against time with his encroaching blindness?
His London friends realise he is missing and try to find him, led by his number one admirer, the artist Mary Delany, who passionately opposes the oppression of women and celebrates her own sexuality. Handel's Christian faith is so badly shaken by a quarrel with the freethinking hermit that it threatens to prevent him from completing his life's work. The novel takes us right away from the usual stereotypes of Handel as a haughty courtier or a comical foreigner, and into the mind of an intensely private and passionate man whose unique musical gifts are enjoyed more widely today than ever before.