For three years she bad dreamed of coming back... Sophie Monroe - clever, passionate and incapable of fitting in - returns to Jamaica, her childhood home, in the summer of 1903. Eden, the hauntingly beautiful plantation where she grew up, is nearly bankrupt. Her own inheritance, the old house at Fever Hill, is slipping into ruin. And her sister Madeleine is hiding something. But what? What could be so wrong that she cannot tell Sophie?

There seems to be nowhere to'turn. Even Sophie's childhood hero Ben Kelly is avoiding her; for Ben has troubles of his own, as he struggles to forget an appalling childhood in the London slums. Soon Sophie finds herself facing not lust a clash of loyalties but the savage prejudices of a colonial society. And,ultimately, both she and Ben must confront the ghosts of their own pasts...

For three years she bad dreamed of coming back... Sophie Monroe - clever, passionate and incapable of fitting in - returns to Jamaica, her childhood home, in the summer of 1903. Eden, the hauntingly beautiful plantation where she grew up, is nearly bankrupt. Her own inheritance, the old house at Fever Hill, is slipping into ruin. And her sister Madeleine is hiding something. But what? What could be so wrong that she cannot tell Sophie?

There seems to be nowhere to"turn. Even Sophie"s childhood hero Ben Kelly is avoiding her; for Ben has troubles of his own, as he struggles to forget an appalling childhood in the London slums. Soon Sophie finds herself facing not lust a clash of loyalties but the savage prejudices of a colonial society. And,ultimately, both she and Ben must confront the ghosts of their own pasts...