The lives of Stella Bain - Anita Shreve

Hauled in a cart to a field hospital in northern France in March 1916,
an American
woman wakes from unconsciousness to the smell of gas
gangrene, the sounds of men in pain, and an almost complete loss of
memory: she knows only that she can drive an ambulance, she can draw,
and her name is Stella Bain.


A stateless woman in a lawless
country, Stella embarks on a journey to reconstruct her life. Suffering
an agonising and inexplicable array of symptoms, she finds her way to
London. There, Dr August Bridge, a cranial surgeon turned psychologist,
is drawn to tracking her amnesia to its source. What brutality was she
fleeing when she left the tranquil seclusion of a New England college
campus to serve on the Front; for what crime did she need to atone - and
whom did she leave behind?


Vivid, intense and gripping, packed with secrets and revelations, The Lives of Stella Bain is at once a ravishing love story and an intense psychological mystery.