The story of W. B. Yeats and Georgie Hyde-Lees begins on the eve of World War I, when the ghost-mad poet admits the young woman to a secret society. This triggers a years-long courtship between one of history's most famous poets and the brilliant woman that shared and drove his obsessions.
Living on her own for the first time in London, Georgie spends her days tending to wounded soldiers and her evenings pursuing ghosts, sometimes accompanied by Willy Yeats, the man she expects to marry. But none of the people surrounding Georgie - her mother, her friends Dorothy Shakespear and Ezra Pound, an injured sergeant in the hospital ward, or the beautiful Iseult Gonne--can consider the ancient Willy Yeats as a credible partner for her. As the war intensifies and the proof of an afterlife continues to elude them, can Georgie and Willy's relationship hold?
In bright, beautiful prose Alice Miller charts the early years between Georgie and Yeats, bringing to life not only these characters, but the uncertain world in which they live: the ever-present war; the secret societies; the fears and the promises, large and small. This is a story about faith and love, lost and found and fought for, and the small moments on which whole lives hinge. How, Miller asks, do we know when faith or love is certain and to what degree are they defined by how far we are willing to chase them?