Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridgesthe result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda. Setting in motion the novels chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidentsincluding a German U-boats sinking of the Nova ScotiaNewfoundland ferryCaribou, on which Aunt Constance Hillyer might or might not be travelinglend intense narrative power to Normans uncannily layered story.