What Is Left the Daughter

A two-time National Book Award finalist delivers a stirring tale of the passions - tender, obsessive, even murderous - that are unleashed by a wartime love triangle.

Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges - the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda.

Setting in motion the novel's chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents - including a German U-boat's sinking of the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland ferry Caribou - lend intense narrative power to Norman's uncannily layered story.

Wyatt's account of the astonishing events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. What Is Left the Daughter is Howard Norman at his celebrated best.