From acclaimed writer Peter Ho Davies comes an engrossing wartime love story set in the stunning landscape of North Wales during the final, harrowing months of World War II.

Young Esther Evans has lived her whole life within the confines of her remote mountain village. The daughter of a fiercely nationalistic sheep farmer, Esther yearns for a taste of the wider world that reaches her only through broadcasts on the BBC. Then, in the wake of D-day, the world comes to her in the form of a German POW camp set up on the outskirts of Esther's village.

The arrival of the Germans in the camp is a source of intense curiosity in the local pub, where Esther pulls pints for both her neighbors and the unwelcome British guards. One summer evening she follows a group of schoolboys to the camp boundary. As the boys heckle the prisoners across the barbed wire fence, one soldier seems to stand apart. He is Karsten Simmering, a German corporal, only eighteen, a young man of tormented conscience struggling to maintain his honor and humanity. To Esther's astonishment, Karsten calls out to her.

These two young people from worlds apart will be drawn into a perilous romance that calls into personal question the meaning of love, family, loyalty, and national identity. The consequences of their relationship resonate through the lives of a vividly imagined cast of characters: the drunken BBC comedian who befriends Esther, Esther's stubborn father, and the resentful young British "evacuee" who lives on the farm — even the German-Jewish interrogator investigating the most notorious German prisoner in Wales, Rudolf Hess.

Set in the stunning landscape of North Wales just after D-Day, Peter Ho Davies's profoundly moving first novel traces a perilous wartime romance. Barmaid Esther Evans has lived all of her seventeen years on a sheep farm in Snowdonia, and she yearns for a taste of the wider world. But in the final, harrowing months of World War II, the world unexpectedly comes to her, in the form of a POW camp set up nearby. It is there that she first encounters Karsten, a young German corporal of tormented conscience, struggling to reconcile his surrender with his sense of honor.

The consequences of their relationship resonate through the lives of an unforgettable ensemble cast of characters: Esther's proud nationalist father, the resentful English evacuee who lives on the farm, the German-Jewish interrogator sent to Wales to investigate the British Army's most notorious Nazi prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In this thought-provoking work, all will come to question where they belong and where their loyalties lie.

Peter Ho Davies is the director of the prestigious graduate program increative writing at the University of Michigan. His collection The UgliestHouse in the World won the John Llewellyn Rhys and PEN/Macmillanawards in Britain. His second collection, Equal Love, was hailed by theNew York Times Book Review for its "stories as deep and clear as myth."It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New YorkTimes Notable Book. In 2003 Davies was named among the "Best ofYoung British Novelists"by Granta. The son of a Welsh father andChinese mother, Davies was raised in England and spent his summersin Wales. He is married and has one son.