The Other Side of Silence

Pippa resents her authoritarian father, Joseph Eastman, an eminent historian. She escapes to Australia, and falls for Jude. After her mother's death, she returns to look after Joseph, suffering from dementia. Jude follows her to look for his alcoholic father. The book opens as an email hints at a family connection in Finland and a skeleton in the cupboard. After Joseph's death Pippa finds a diary giving a vivid picture of the Finnish-Russian Winter War and how her grandfather Josef, a Russian soldier, was rescued by a Finnish farmer's daughter. Pippa's father was their child. Pippa persuades Jude to help her with her family research in Finland and finds that her grandfather, identified as a Russian, was deported by occupying Germans to a German slave camp. Later her father returned to trace the traitor and deal with him. Meanwhile Jude is trying to trace his father, who had abandoned his wife and son in Australia, eventually finding him in recovery but blind. The book shows how Pippa and Jude, separately and together, conduct their searches and deal with their outcome, in the process finding a new depth to their own relationship.