'Every summer, the country families load the roof racks and motor south to the Bon Accord hotel. They find order here, beside the sea. Constancy in a changeable world.
'But this time ladders and workmen choke the foyer. There's foreign muck on the menu, posters proclaiming a Summer Festival of Writing. And child abductors are lurking on the sun blasted streets, in the tricky dunes. There's smoke in the hot inland winds. Everything's different this time. This time Marian Parr is not complete. She knows she should not have come.
'As love fractures, and old certainties crumble, Marian leans grieving against a balcony post, meddling with the cosmos.' (From the publisher's website.)