"There were those who liked to refer to the shopping area of Kelburn as 'the village'. It gave it status. Did they have in mind some impossible idyll of an English village of established families, in which people knew their place and weather was predictable? The reality of Kelburn in 1930s New Zealand could not have been more different. Like the plants around the steep hillsides, people, too, are struggling to become established. Some people in this story turn out to be not as they first seem. Public faces mask unhealed wounds. A chance event, a "sudden death", connects the characters in one way or another. The story that unfolds is the story of their changing fortunes, hopes, fears, loves and moods throughout the Spring of 1939. The looming war has little significance to some of them, others can hear the drums beating all too clearly. But no-one living in Wellington can ignore the weather. They are all affected by its fickleness, its days of violence and its days of blessed calm"--Back cover.