From one of Ireland's best-selling novelists, a haunting love story that burns with passion and ultimate loss. Daniel falls in love with red-haired Helen the moment he sets eyes on her, an impish eleven-year-old running down a dappled avenue. She is his best friend Kieran's cousin, and it is Daniel's first visit to Lough Corrlock, an enchanting lake in the Wicklow mountains not far from Dublin. From this first meeting, Daniel finds himself obsessed. But he cannot understand why Kieran is so dismissive of Helen. In the years to come, the tortured relationship between the friends will lead them, seduced by the promise of great happiness, down a path of passion and aching loss. For what they do not know is that happiness must be either grasped to the heart - or lost forever....