It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon is one of the only neutral ports left in Eu
rope - a city filled with spies, crowned heads and refugees of every nationality
, tipping back absinthe to while away the time until their escape. Awaiting safe
passage to New York on the S. S.
Manhattan, two couples meet: Pete and Julia
Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward an
d Iris Freleng, elegant, independently wealthy, bohemian, and beset by the socia
l and sexual anxieties of their class. Swept up in the tumult, the hidden curren
ts of the lives of these four characters - Julia's status as a Jew, Pete and Edw
ard's affair, Iris's increasingly desperate efforts to save her tenuous marriage
- begin to come loose. This journey will change the four of them irrevocably, a
s Europe sinks into war.
