The novel opens in the summer of 1914, in an English cathedral city. Mrs. Otway sits with her friend Miss Forsyth, grappling with an impossible question: what does she do with Anna, her faithful German servant of eighteen years, now that England has declared war on Germany? Anna has nursed Mrs. Otway's children, knows every corner of the household, has been family more than staff. But suddenly her German origins make her dangerous in ways both real and imagined. Lowndes, better known for her Jack the Ripper novel The Lodger, wrote this book in the heat of wartime, capturing something invaluable: the way ordinary people navigate impossible choices between love and duty, loyalty and fear. The tension between Mrs. Otway's fierce devotion to Anna and the mounting pressure to denounce Germans as enemies makes for compelling, uncomfortable reading. This is historical fiction at its most intimate, a small domestic story that reveals how quickly the ground beneath relationships can shift when the world demands you choose between the person you love and the country you owe.
