A brush with death may finally bring a father and son together, in the conclusion to the award-winning, decades-spanning series. Sir Lewis Eliot has made his way from a deprived childhood to knighthood, but when he experiences cardiac arrest during surgery, his thoughts turn to the meaning of it all. As he considers a life spent in the realms of law, government, and academia, he can't refrain from passing judgment on himself. Yet amid his melancholy musings about age and infirmity, Eliot finds his characteristic optimism has not deserted him—and looks to the future in the form of his adult son, who is part of a new generation he struggles to understand, but who remains as beloved as the day he was born . . . "As with [John] Galsworthy, Snow's respectable achievement has been to make honest drama out of the undramatic stuff of compromise." —Time "A master craftsman in fiction." —The New York Times