Sometimes the key to the future lies in the past . . .

In the horseshoe bay of Kalami in Corfu, a tumultuous love affair begins between a renowned novelist and a woman escaping scandal. Years later, her daughter Melissa, running from her own past, returns to the island ...

Melissa's life in England is in disarray. There are cracks in her perfect marriage, and her elderly mother, Elizabeth, is losing her memory and slowly drifting away. In the last glimmers of lucidity, Elizabeth presents her daughter with a gift that suggests a very secret history - one that leads Melissa to Kalami, where Julian Adie, poet, traveller and novelist, once lived.

But what is the connection between Adie - an alluring hedonist who discarded four wives - and Melissa's mother Elizabeth? As Melissa chases Adie's shadow across the golden places he loved, she finds her mother may not have been the person she thought. Forced to question morality, loyalty and her own unwillingness to let love in, Melissa is gradually led to a dramatic re-evaluation of her own life.