Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability—and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, she hopes to find peace by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her to England: her aging father, Frankie Dobbs, is not getting any younger.

On a ship bound for England, Maisie realizes she isn’t ready to return and disembarks in Gibraltar. In the British garrison town at the southern tip of Spain, she becomes enmeshed in the murder of Sebastian Babayoff, a photographer and member of Gibraltar’s Sephardic Jewish community. Meanwhile, at a crossroads between her past and future, Maisie must choose a direction, knowing that England is, for her, an equally dangerous place, but in quite a different way.