Shaken free from the normal patterns of their lives by a catastrophic blizzard, the intimate desires of a Northern Irish community are thrown into sharp relief as they experience love, death, and finally, murder.

In a house with windows flung defiantly wide, a wife dies before her husband can make his confession. Her coffin is pulled to the church on a sledge by Peter, a young man engulfed by his first feelings of love for an older, unattainable woman. Elsewhere, an old woman searches desperately for a wedding dress in her dream of love. When the electricity fails, a lonely headmaster is forced to close his school and in shadowy candlelight he is tempted into indiscretion. Meanwhile, in the very heart of the city, the purity of snow is tainted by the murder of a young woman, and as one man begins to unravel the dark secrets of the city, he knows he is in race against time-to find the murderer before the snow melts.

David Park peers into the souls of his characters with an insight and compassion that makes this flawed slice of humanity somehow glorious. He is a writer of rare dignity and talent.