Claire Fleetwood, an American forensic photographer, is ardent about love and scientific work -- in this she is a characteristic Leslie Forbes heroine. When Claire inherits a large house and garden in London from relatives she never knew she had, she imagines it will be a slice of the English dream, but after the brutal murder of her best friend, she learns that her inheritance involves more than she wanted or bargained for.

Desperate to find a motive for her friend's death, Claire is impelled to join a scientific expedition led by her cousin Jack Ironstone, who is one of the men she suspects of being responsible for the murder. Her journey leads from Jack the Ripper's claustrophobic Whitechapel to the Fleetwoods' murky past in the Asian opium trade and the wild "paradise" valleys of Tibet. It parallels a route taken a century earlier during Britain's Great Triangulation of India by Claire's distant relative Magda Ironstone and a mysterious botanist. As Claire reconstructs the triangular love affair she imagines took place then, her own story is overtaken by Magda's -- and to deadly effect.

This dazzling novel of loss and regeneration weaves together the stories of three extraordinary families in an epic adventure.