Falling in love. Falling from a mountaintop. Falling out of favor. Falling from grace. This mesmerizing novel captures the exhilaration of emotional freefall in its myriad guises.

Against a shifting backdrop of Alpine peaks, a small Welsh village, and the bombed-out London of World War II, a man and two women come together. Years later, the tangle of their relationships is imprinted on the lives of two fatherless young men, friends since childhood, who find themselves similarly ensnared in a series of love triangles. Plumbing the extremes of emotion that attend first love and death-defying adventure, Simon Mawer unfolds a tale of passion and risk, enchantment and betrayal that confirms his reputation as one of the most ambitious and accomplished novelists writing today.