Longlisted for the 1998 Women's Prize for Fiction
Venezuela, 1953. The war is over and people are trying to rebuild their lives. For the privileged expat community around the Maracaibo oilfields life is still a hedonistic round of cocktail parties, salacious gossip, and illicit liaisons. At the centre of this glamorous, hard-drinking ‘set’ is Texan oilman, Jack Lindberg, and his beautiful English wife, Vivienne. But the war has changed every- thing. Observing the shifts and subterfuges of their world is Tony – Vivienne’s eleven year-old daughter. As the cracks begin to show in her parents’ marriage, and as the facade of colonial society starts to disintegrate, a tragic drama unfolds that will change her life forever.
