This is a love story. In this, his first novel, Eugene McNamaara tells the story of Jack Kaspar, failed architect, and son of an RAF pilot killed in the Battle of Britain, who spends his life feeling bereft, orphaned and exiled. Survivor of at least one blighted love affair and a failed marriage, he is wary about his future when he meets Sally Hudson, art curator, herself a survivor of an abusive marriage. Jack and Sallys love story is intercut with passages from Jacks grandfathers journal, his grandmothers journal, excerpts from books about his grandmother, Jacks imagined re-creation of his parents first meeting, Jacks own journal, and Sallys journal. This novel is about the painful burden of public and private history and how the survivors cope and get on with their own lives.