When Nicholas arrives at the funeral of his father – the author Charles Saddler (1920-2010) - he is greeted with suspicion by the half-siblings he has never met and fascinated by the behaviour of his half-sister, Josie. Their father’s wish that his ashes be scattered on a mountain in the Bavarian Alps inspires Nicholas and Josie to begin a journey of discovery and to find out more about their father’s past. The only way into this life is through their father’s best-selling novel, The White Mountain, and through odds and ends that turn up after the funeral. The book poses questions of its own. How much of the book is based on fact and how much is the product of the writer’s imagination? Their attempts to find out take the siblings from Devon to London and, finally, to the Bavarian Alps where they discover that their father has influenced them in ways that both were unaware of.
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