After barely surviving his tour as a mountaineer in the Italian Alps of the Second World War, William Bromley settled down and made a quiet life for himself: teaching history at a London boarding school, reading, a few drinks at the pub on Friday nights. That all ends when a soldier from William's mountain regiment reappears, calling in a bargain struck during the war. William must return to that perilous ground, reliving the terror of the war and confronting new dangers in "a narrative so strong in imagery and detail that the reader can almost feel the gusts of an Alpine blizzard" (Library Journal).