From the internationally bestselling author and host of "The Graham Norton Show," a dazzling and decades-sweeping story about love, bravery and what it means to live a significant life.

Always on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie Howe was never quite sure enough of herself to take center stage. After all, life already had judged her harshly. Now old, Frankie finds it easier to forget the life that came before.

Then Damian, a young Irish caretaker, arrives at her London flat to keep an eye on her as she recovers from a fall. A memory is sparked, and the past crackles into life as Damian listens to the story Frankie has kept stored away all these years.

Traveling from post-war Ireland to 1960s New York --- a city full of art, larger-than-life characters and turmoil --- Frankie shares a world in which friendship and chance encounters collide. A place where, for a while, life blazes with an intensity that can’t last but perhaps will live on in other ways and in other people.