From the author of The Gustav Sonata Fat and fifty, educated only to be a wife and mother, Ruby Constad has reached a point of crisis. Her husband, Leon, lies in a nursing home after a stroke that has left him paralysed; her grown-up children are gone. In her anguish Ruby appeals for help to a half-remembered figure from her colonial Indian girlhood – Sister Benedicta. Gradually the events leading up to Leon’s stroke are revealed and a woman emerges whose capacity to love, hope and understand are far greater than she realises.Over a million Rose Tremain books sold A writer of exceptional talent … Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion Independent I There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain Irish Times Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect The Times’Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists’ Salman Rushdie Tremain is a writer of exemplary vision and particularity. The fictional world is rendered with extraordinary vividness Marcel Theroux, Guardian