"At the age of eleven, Helen leaves her home in Paris to spend the summer with her parents and her older sister Lea on a Mediterranean island - an island full of beauty, but marred by a string of mysterious tragedies. Ingenuous and shy, yet sharply observant, Helen watches as tension escalates in this summer community: her dignified expatriate parents, bearing up under the weight of a struggling marriage; the provocative and rebellious Lea; Mr. Peters, the eccentric American painter next door; the nurturing housekeeper, Adriana; and the family's mysterious houseguests, the Ashtons, who arrive with well-worn suitcases from a life of exotic nomadism. But when one invasive act draws Helen from the sidelines into the center of the drama, her continued silence takes on tragic implications that culminate in her sister's disappearance."--BOOK JACKET.