GUERNSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS, 1991Ruth Samuels is moving to Guernsey. She feels alive again for the first time since her husband's death.Ruth recently met islander Matthew Frelé and knew right away that their attraction is mutual. He is enigmatic and exciting, but there's something odd about him. She senses secrets and a disturbing inner anger barely controlled. Who is this man? What is he hiding? What is there in his past that holds him back from committing to a relationship? She guesses at abominations during his childhood under the German Occupation of the Channel Isles.Having fled the torments of Nazi Germany Ruth knows the terrible legacy of childhood trauma. When she presses Matthew for details of that time he refuses to discuss it. It's only when Nicol Rochet, a childhood friend, together with the one-time parish priest, the Abbé Saint Jude, bring pertinent facts to her attention that she's able to piece together the horrifying facts about Matthew's forbidden past.The details are more dreadful than she could ever have imagined. The vile act of barbarism she unearths put even Hitler's henchmen to shame.Can she save Matthew from those appalling memories? Or will they forever consume him, and destroy both him, and any hope of their future together?
About the Author: Tessa Lorant Warburg lives in England with her elder son, his Thai wife and their three lively children. Originally a mathematician, Tessa began her working life as a computer programmer, then married an author who encouraged her to start writing. She wrote a series of unexpectedly popular books about her hobby of knitting, and patented two knitting aids: The Golden Gauge, a device for isolating long knitting pattern lines, and The Silver Gauge, used for substituting yarns with others of the same thickness. She is featured as one of a handful of knitters in Richard Rutt's seminal A HISTORY OF HAND KNITTING. After her husband died of cancer Tessa wrote, at his request, her first non-knitting book, A VOICE AT TWILIGHT. This takes a look, not always solemn, at the experience of living - and dying - with the Big C. Tessa was awarded the Oddfellows Social Concern Award for this book, and the prize was presented at the House of Commons. As family members kept telling her how like her husband the book sounded she thought she might be able to use that skill to write fiction. Tessa has now published six suspense novels and a family saga - a trilogy - set in North Germany and based on her mother's family. And she's busy writing more books, both fiction and non-fiction.