Part love story, part murder mystery, set on the cusp of the Second World War, Russell Banks's newest novel raises dangerous questions about class, politics, art, love, and madness-and explores what happens when two powerful personalities begin to break the rules.

Vanessa Cole is a wild, stunningly beautiful heiress with a scandalous past. But on July 4, 1936, at her family's country home in the Adirondack Mountains, two events coincide to permanently alter the course of Vanessa's life: her father dies suddenly of a heart attack, and a mysteriously seductive local artist, Jordan Groves, lands his biplane at the Cole's dock....

Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondack wilderness to the skies above war-torn Spain, The Reserve is a clever, incisive, and passionately romantic novel of suspense that adds a new dimension to this acclaimed author's extraordinary repertoire.