In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon a stately yellow house and a garden guarded by looming boxwoods. She instantly knew that boxwoods that large--twelve feet tall, fifteen feet wide--had to be hundreds of years old. So, as it happened, was the house: Sylvester Manor had been held in the same family for eleven generations. Formerly encompassing all of Shelter Island, a pearl of 8,000...

It is 1938 and the final days of the British Empire. In a bungalow high up in the green hills above the plains of Ceylon, under a vast blue sky, live the Ferguson family: Bella, a precocious eight-year-old, her father Henry, owner of Pitlochry, a tea plantation, and her mother Virginia. The story centres around the Pavilion in the Clouds, nestled in idyllic grounds carved out of the wilderness. But all is not as serene as it seems. Bella is suspicious...

Longing to rid herself of a family plantation that holds disturbing memories, Leslie returns after a long absence and meets the farm's reclusive caretaker, with whom she uncovers haunting family mysteries surrounding a cryptic grave.