In Italy, the war is ending in a confusion of violence, politics and loyalties. In Geneva a twenty-year, deep friendship between Americans John Reardon and Harry Anders, an international oil tycoon and fixer, is about to be tested. Anders, whose health is failing, has a soldier son last heard of in battles around Umbria. He’s now missing. Reardon makes the decision to journey into the maelstrom of a collapsing nation and find the answer to the missing son, captured or a deserter, or dead. He will fall in with another on a similar quest, a beautiful German girl obsessed by a shot down Luftwaffe pilot.
In this new, forced, dangerous opportunity to examine his own sheltered, uneventful life as a privileged American Reardon must also look into the motives and credibility of his travelling companion, soon turned lover. In the end the reasons for her own search will turn out to be far more complex than he could ever have imagined.
In Italy, the war is ending in a confusion of violence, politics and loyalties. In Geneva a twenty-year, deep friendship between Americans John Reardon and Harry Anders, an international oil tycoon and fixer, is about to be tested. Anders, whose health is failing, has a soldier son last heard of in battles around Umbria. He’s now missing. Reardon makes the decision to journey into the maelstrom of a collapsing nation and find the answer to the missing son, captured or a deserter, or dead. He will fall in with another on a similar quest, a beautiful German girl obsessed by a shot down Luftwaffe pilot.
In this new, forced, dangerous opportunity to examine his own sheltered, uneventful life as a privileged American Reardon must also look into the motives and credibility of his travelling companion, soon turned lover. In the end the reasons for her own search will turn out to be far more complex than he could ever have imagined.