From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement--a brilliant and compassionate novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.

"A remarkable novel, haunting and original and written in prose that anyone who writes can only envy." --The Washington Post

The calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he sees a man die in a freak hot-air balloon accident. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety, but unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day--something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.