An evocative and dramatic novel told in the voices of two narrators: Violet, who in 1944 is imprisoned in the tower of a rambling country house by her family; and Claudine, a modern-day property negotiator who becomes involved in handling the sale of the derelict Whitecliff in 2004. Violet's story is of young innocent love for a local lad taking an unfortunate twist, while Claudine is a thoroughly twenty-first-century character: daughter of a loving father with a less loving stepmother, she marries in haste after her father's death, and is at a turning point in her life when she starts to find out the true story of Violet. Is happiness a possibility for these women in their separate and very different worlds?
The novel explores the lives of three sisters and their partners as they navigate the complexities of pregnancy, love, and what it truly means to be a family.
Set in mid-1980s Istanbul, the novel follows a master well-digger and his young apprentice as they search for water on a barren plain. The story explores themes of fathers and sons, individual freedom, and the clash between Western and Eastern myths (specifically Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Ferdowsi's Rostam and Sohrab).
