On a dead December day in 1996, Alice Rossetti Greerson finds something that powerfully links her to Captain Phillip Rossetti, her beloved ancestor. It replaces the perfect love she thought she'd found, and continues a journey that took her from a lost boy in France to a husband who failed her, and leads finally to the tragic limerence that changes her life for ever.

In a story that ranges from the English port of Bristol at the end of its slave-trading years to the tranquility of the Wye Valley, Alice weaves a tangled web she could never have imagined at the outset. Those who care for her the most are unable to help her, and she craves forgiveness for the secret crimes she fears she will never be free of.

This is a literary novel with wide appeal beyond mainstream women's writing, with deep character development and evocative descriptions of Bristol and the Welsh border country, along with a powerful historical element giving depth to the main storyline.

This story is about love and obsession, about Alice's struggle to overcome her disappointments and to fulfil her long-held belief in perfect love. It deals with longing, with forgiveness, and with promises kept and broken. The vivid historical strand running through the story - so vital to Alice - brings to life the ancestors she's proud of and those she would rather forget; the English port of Bristol holds them all and the unblemished life of her hero Captain Phillip Rossetti guides her through the fantasies of her youth to the calamity she is helpless to avoid.