In 1994, Marko Novak`s world is torn apart by the death of his best friend. Kemal Lekic, a young soldier in the darkest days of the Bosnian war, is killed in the shelling of their home town. But his body is never recovered.Marko flees to England, hoping to put his broken homeland and a dark secret behind him. In 2004, human rights researcher Anya Teal is following a tenuous lead in the hunt for a Bosnian man with blood on his hands. She is also clinging to the fragile hope that she can rebuild a relationship with her first love, William Howell.When Anya invites him to join her on a Christmas holiday in the Thai resort of Kao Lak, she is offering Will the chance to unpick the mistakes of their past, but Kao Lak may also be home to the man Anya is looking for. What no-one can know, is that a disaster as destructive as a war is approaching, detonated in the sea-bed of the Indian Ocean. In its wake, everything they thought they knew will be overturned.