Johnny, an outstanding young swimmer, went missing nearly thirty years ago: drowned, or so everyone except his sister Imogen, the narrator of Jennifer Johnston's beguiling new novel, believes.

The event literally leave Imogen speachless, for how could this happen? Johnny, encourage, pushed even, from a child by his father, could have made the Olympic team, couldn't he? In the company of his friend Bruno, the handsome young German tutor, Imogen has seen him slicing through the water, staying out for two hours before racing back gleaming. She has sailed with the two young men out across the bay that lies beneath the old stone house Great Grandfather bought at the beginning of the century.

In this wonderfully written novel, the author tells of the year that changed their lives forever. The sheer brilliance of her storytelling and the beauty of her prose show her to be the mistress of her craft: able to cross generations with consummate skill - for tragic echoes connect the narrator with the Great War and Dublin in the 1920s.

Letters, memoirs, fragments, poetry and music imbue the novel with a richness that all but overwhelms the reader.