Taking as her start point, Ovid's story about Leto, who pregnant by Jupiter flees the wrath of his wife Juno, Marina Warner adapts the tale to a wild and lawless time, when young Leto, on the run from her lover's wife, gives birth to twins. She saves the baby girl, but the boy is snatched from her. Over the centuries, we find Leto searching for her son. As the novel sweeps from mythological times and the Dark Ages, to the urban squalor of Victorian Europe, and ultimately to the present day, as wars still rage across the region where Ovid first imagined her, Leto reappears, with her daughter, in different guises - as singer, artist, maid, Bosnian refugee.A magical feat of storytelling, full of myth and mystery, sensual writing and suspense, which keeps the reader guessing right up to the end.