Large paperback in very tidy condition.

Ideals and convictions are not always so clear in the murky years between the First World War and the Second. For Tom and Kitty Locke, children of the damaged WWI generation, visiting their cousin Nenna in Rome is a pure joy. For their adoptive parents Nadine and Riley, though, the ground is still shifting underfoot.

Nobody knew in 1919 that the children they were bearing would be just ripe for the next war in 1939; nobody knew, in 1935, the implications of an Italian Jewish family supporting Mussolini.

Meanwhile Peter Locke and Mabel Zachary have found each other again in London, itself a city reborn but riddled with intolerances of its own. As the heat rises across Europe, voices grow louder and everyone must brace once more.