"In the summer of 1973, Oda and Paul Klein's eight-year-old daughter, Vera, drowns in the neighbors' pool. Paul flees his grief by taking a military posting in Suriname. Seven years later, when he returns, a mysterious fire burns down the neighbors' house, and a young girl appears out of the flames. She is fifteen, as Vera would now have been. Paul and Oda agree to take her in temporarily feelingas if they have been given another chance to form a family."--Jacket.