Love's death

"In the summer of 1973, Oda and Paul Klein's eight-year-old daughter, Vera, drowns in the neighbors' pool. Paul flees his grief by taking a military posting in Suriname. Seven years later, when he returns, a mysterious fire burns down the neighbors' house, and a young girl appears out of the flames. She is fifteen, as Vera would now have been. Paul and Oda agree to take her in temporarily - feeling as if they have been given another chance to form a family.

Finally, in the last part of this novel, Paul's friend Emil reveals the central role he has played in the Kleins' lives."--BOOK JACKET.