The Crossing

Resumen del libro

She is sailing. She is alone. Ahead of her is the world's curve and beyond that, everything else. The known, the imagined, the imagined known.

Who else has entered Tim's life the way Maud did? This girl who fell past him, lay seemingly dead on the ground, then stood and walked. That was where it all began.

He wants her - wants to rescue her, to reach her. Yet there is nothing to suggest Maud has any need of him, that she is not already complete. A woman with a talent for survival, who works long hours and loves to sail - preferably on her own. A woman who, when a crisis comes, will turn to the sea for refuge, embarking on a voyage that will test her to the utmost, that will change everything . . .

From the Costa Award-winning author of Pure comes a viscerally honest, hypnotic portrait of modern love and motherhood, the lure of the sea and the ultimate unknowability of others. This pitch-perfect novel confirms Andrew Miller's position as one of the finest writers of his generation.

On the surface, Maud and Tim seem ill-matched. Maud is a scientist, an only child from a modest background; Tim is a musician from a large, rich family. She is emotionally cool, he wears his heart on his sleeve. Yet they make a home together, have a child and restore an old yacht. One day they will sail it, all three.

Then a dreadful tragedy occurs. The strange thing is, Maud appears unscathed by it. Tim's family are horrified - what is wrong with her? She tells no one when she begins to feel a ghostly presence, or of her plan to sail single-handed across the Atlantic. Maybe she can escape what is pursuing her . . .

Ranging from the West Country to an isolated orphanage in Brazil, this is the mesmerising story of an enigmatic woman and her emotional journey - as deeply affecting as her physical journey becomes nail-bitingly dramatic.