Winner BEST NOVEL 2008 World Fantasy Awards
Provence, in the south of France, is one of those parts of the world that can truly be called a paradise. But history teaches us that paradises are coveted, and fought over, and those sun–dappled vineyards and river valleys have also seen millennia of invasions and violence, strangers coming time after time to lay claim to it.
Ned Marriner is spending six weeks with his famous photographer father in the city of Aix–en–Provence, near Marseilles. While exploring the cathedral his father is shooting, Ned encounters Kate Wenger, an American exchange student with a deep knowledge of the area's history. But even Kate is at a loss when she and Ned surprise a scar–faced, knife–carrying stranger, deep inside the cathedral. ‘I think you ought to go now,’ he tells them. ‘You have blundered into the corner of a very old story...’
In this ancient place, where the borders between the living and the long–dead are blurred, Ned and his family are about to be drawn into a strange and haunting tale, as mythic figures from conflicts of long ago erupt into the present, changing—and—claiming lives.