A Good Death

It is 1944 and Theo Cazalle is returning to the family he left in Bonnemort, an estate deep in the French countryside, when he went off to fight with the Free French. Memories of Bonnemort have sustained him through four years of war—an image of a golden world to which he hoped, desperately, to return. But when at last he comes home, he finds that world in tatters. The house has been abandoned, a family servant has been shot, Theo's wife has been accused of collaborating, and a Nazi officer has been found dead—naked, with his throat slit—in front of Bonnemort's front gate. To save his sanity, Theo must restore order to Bonnemort, but first he must understand the disorder into which it has fallen. Is his wife a whore? A murderer? Or could there be another alternative? Elizabeth Ironside, first introduced to U.S. readers as the author of Death in the Garden, paints a complex picture of the psychological toll of Nazi occupation, and delves into the elusive and complicated nature of truth, loyalty and desire.