From the author of the highly acclaimed The Whitest Flower and its sequel comes a new novel just as vast in scope and powerful storytelling as its predecessors. Three women. . . Two armies. . . One enduring love. Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, this is a powerful, sweeping novel which explores the themes of forgiveness and longing, and the changing role of women, set free by war from the protection of their men. Ellen Rua, together with her natural daughter Mary and adopted daughter Louisa, helps tend the wounds of the soldiers who have fallen in battle, having left her Irish homeland and the Great Famine behind her. In the killing fields of Virginia, she toils, not realising that her estranged son, Patrick and Lavelle, the husband she desperately seeks, are on opposing sides of the terrible conflict. A book, the Love Elegies of poet John Donne, holds the key to her search, as Patrick, Lavelle and her former lover, Stephen Joyce, likewise seek her out -- and each other -- with tragic repercussions.