What is the mysterious violin music that seduces young Tom Dolmer one day at the market with his mother? Music that appears only once and then is gone. But music which thereafter haunts and tantalises him as he struggles to find his place in life. His mother had marked him out to run the family engineering firm, but now the music of Esther's violin has turned his head and opened his heart to other possibilities. Who is Esther and why does she bring together Tom's practical and prosaic family with the glamour and enchantment of the bohemian Gilles family and their beautiful, highly-strung but wonderfully talented daughter, Clara? The answers are found in this sensitive and stylish new novel - set in Europe in the early 1960s. Populated with a cast of richly-drawn and eccentric characters it is a novel that will resonate with all who have fought against their own family circumstances to find their place in life.