The draw for me was the Duke and Duchess of Windsor being cast, along with the setting of the Bahamas during WWII. In fact, I would say I didn’t actually become interested in all of the storylines until 3/4s the way through. She means well and is truly trying to be helpful, but her grueling work schedule makes it hard for her to have the time and space to be there or understand as productively as she would like. This is another one of those books that deploys a plot device that seems to be SO WIDELY used now, by SO MANY authors, that completely annoys me. While the secondary Elfriede plot adds interesting complications to the historical puzzle, it doesn't have quite as much verve.

In fact, Windsor-era Nassau roils with spies, financial swindles, and racial tension, and in the middle stands Benedict Thorpe: a scientist of magnetic charm and murky national loyalties. The story is quite moving as well, showing the importance of a support group and doing a really wonderful job of capturing how trauma recovery works.If this were written 20 or even 15 years ago- their outcomes and their justifications would have not had that "righteousness" pokers of superiority stuck in the readers's face, so often. If you need a memory jog, that was when the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were living in the Bahamas (The Duke – former King Edward VIII of England – was Governor of the Bahamas). While Lulu and Elfriede are fictional characters, they are surrounded by real events and real historical figures of their times.

Now, I have to admit that I love plenty of her books, but that one just rocked my world as I listened to the audio version.I’m looking forward to reading my next book by Williams and definitely recommend this one to historical fiction lovers. At least I know to avoid Beatriz Williams in the future, no matter what the book’s publishers promise. There is an attention to light and shadows that extract the idea of golden hour photography and replicates it to jaw dropping glory.

I've always been interested in her books, but for some reason or another I never took the plunge until now.A second narrative set 40 years earlier focuses on Elfriede von Kleist, a new mother from rural Westphalia with postpartum depression so severe she has attempted suicide, causing her husband, the Baron, to dispatch her to a clinic in Switzerland. There are spies, Nazis, illegitimate siblings, mental illness, and dysfunctional family relationships. Meanwhile, Elfriede's navigation through the world of German nobility delivers some of the book's most heartbreaking and heart-stopping chapters.