The Golden Hour

Set against World War II-era Nassau and early 20th-century Europe, the novel interweaves the stories of two women across decades, connecting them through a single family and the men they love.

In December 1943, Leonora "Lulu" Randolph arrives in wartime London, desperate to free her husband, Benedict Thorpe, from Colditz, a notorious German prison fortress. She meets a British intelligence officer she calls Mr. B—, hoping to trade sensitive information about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. When Mr. B— draws a pistol, Lulu overpowers him and flees. Outside her hotel, she collides with Benedict's sister, Margaret Thorpe, who shelters her and warns that British intelligence may consider Benedict expendable. Margaret insists they travel to Dunnock Lodge, the Scottish house where she and Benedict were born.

The narrative spirals back to June 1941, when Lulu, a young American journalist for Metropolitan magazine, flies to Nassau to cover the Windsors. On the plane, a tall, bespectacled Englishman calmly subdues a drunk passenger who gropes her, remarks that a true romantic would sacrifice love for duty, and vanishes at the terminal.

Alternating with Lulu's story, a parallel narrative unfolds in 1900. Elfriede von Kleist, a young German baroness, has spent two years at a remote Swiss clinic, treated for severe postpartum depression that left her unable to bond with her infant son, Johann, and drove her to attempt suicide. Her only solace is playing the piano late at night. When an Englishman named Wilfred Thorpe arrives to recover from pneumonia, he hears her playing and is enchanted. Elfriede confesses everything, and Wilfred holds her without judgment. An unspoken love develops, but Wilfred is discharged, and Elfriede is summoned home when her husband, Gerhard, falls gravely ill with typhoid.

In Nassau, Lulu struggles to reach the Windsors. She confides her frustrations to Jack, the bartender at the Prince George Hotel who becomes her confidant and protector. At a Government House cocktail party, the Duchess of Windsor proposes a deal: Lulu will write a favorable monthly column in exchange for insider access. Lulu also recognizes the man from the airplane as Benedict Thorpe, introduced as a botanist living on the private island of Swedish industrialist Axel Wenner-Gren.

Elfriede nurses Gerhard through typhoid and rediscovers her bond with Johann. She receives a letter from Wilfred expressing restrained devotion. When Gerhard's nurse, Charlotte, reveals she is pregnant by him, Elfriede feels relief rather than rage, allowing the affair to continue. Charlotte bears three daughters: Ursula, Frederica, and Gertrud. Elfriede raises all four children as her own.

Lulu launches the "Lady of Nassau" column in Metropolitan. A mysterious courier she knows as Mr. Smith delivers sealed envelopes addressed to the Windsors, making Lulu an unwitting go-between for sensitive information. The duchess rewards her with Cartier sapphire earrings. At the debutante ball hosted by Sir Harry Oakes for his daughter Nancy, Lulu and Thorpe share champagne on the moonlit beach. That night, Thorpe is beaten by thugs at the docks and shipped to Miami for treatment.

Five years after the sanatorium, Elfriede and Wilfred reunite on a Florida beach. Elfriede has fled Germany with the children and Charlotte to escape Gerhard's domineering sister, Helga, after Gerhard's death. They consummate their love at last, but Helga tracks them down. When Wilfred sails for England after proposing marriage by letter, Helga bribes Charlotte to take her daughters and vanish. Charlotte and the three girls disappear into Germany forever.

Thorpe returns to Nassau six months later. Lulu confronts him: His eyesight is perfect and his botany research is a front. He tells her about Jewish friends who vanished after Kristallnacht, the coordinated Nazi attacks on Jewish communities in November 1938. Lulu confesses that her first husband was abusive and that she killed him deliberately. They become lovers, though Lulu later realizes Thorpe copied confidential documents from her desk.

Elfriede and Wilfred marry in Scotland in August 1905 and settle at Dunnock Lodge. Their daughter Margaret's traumatic birth triggers another episode of postpartum depression, and Wilfred holds Elfriede through months of despair. In June 1916, while Elfriede is pregnant with Benedict, she confronts Wilfred about rumors that he keeps a woman in Paris. He reveals his secret trips were to pay a lawyer searching for Charlotte and the lost girls. Days later, a telegram announces his death on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Elfriede gives birth to Benedict on their wedding anniversary.

In July 1943, Thorpe is recalled to London. The duke officiates his marriage to Lulu at Government House. That night, Thorpe reveals his parents' fate: His father died on the Somme, and his mother drowned herself after giving birth to him. At dawn, he departs. Hours later, Sir Harry Oakes, the richest man in the British Empire, is found murdered. Alfred de Marigny, Oakes's son-in-law, is arrested on fabricated evidence, acquitted, and deported. Mr. Smith's body washes up on a beach, and Jack vanishes. In November, Johann von Kleist, Thorpe's German half brother, tells Lulu that Thorpe was captured and imprisoned at Colditz. Lulu confronts the duchess, returns the earrings, leverages her copied documents to escape Nassau, and mails them to Mr. B— from a Swiss post office.

At Dunnock Lodge, Margaret discovers among her father's effects that Wilfred had located Charlotte's eldest daughter, Ursula Kassmeyer, in Paris before his death. Margaret, a clerk and translator at the Special Operations Executive (SOE), recognizes the name: Ursula is one of SOE's most valuable agents in Germany, running an escape line for downed pilots and Jews. The lost girl is Benedict's half sister. Margaret sends Ursula a coded message revealing that her half brother is in Colditz.

Lulu and Margaret travel on forged papers to Lake Constance, where Ursula crosses by boat during a storm and delivers devastating news: Benedict died of fever at Colditz. But a woman came to claim his body: his mother.

The truth emerges. After Benedict's birth, Elfriede's postpartum depression returned, and she attempted to drown herself in the river. Wilfred's mother had her committed to an asylum and erased from the children's lives. Johann eventually rescued Elfriede and brought her to Switzerland, where she now runs the former sanatorium as a refuge for resistance fighters and Jews fleeing persecution. When Johann informed her of Benedict's imprisonment, Elfriede orchestrated his extraction from Colditz using Johann's military connections. His "death" was a cover story.

At the clinic, Benedict receives word that Lulu is in Switzerland. He staggers toward the door as Ursula arrives and recognizes Elfriede as Mutti, the woman who raised her. Lulu appears moments later, visibly pregnant, and collapses into the arms of her living husband while Margaret watches from the doorway, wiping her eyes with a linen cloth.

In an epilogue set in June 1951, Lulu and Thorpe live in New Hampshire with three children. Aboard the RMS Queen Mary, they encounter the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, haggard and diminished. Lulu passes them with a nod. The duke replies; the duchess remains silent as the golden hour fades.