It is May 1917 and war overshadows the haunting beauty of spring in Zennor. As U-boats attack ship after ship on the Cornish coastline, the village is alive with talk of treachery. In a world of call-up, telegrams, suspicions and silent fears, no one is immune.

Not Clare Coyne, a young artist, nor Clare’s beloved cousin John William, on leave from the trenches and shell-shocked. And especially not D. H. Lawrence and his German wife Frieda who, hoping to escape the war-fever of London, find themselves the objects of the shifting, dangerous tide of scorn and gossip.