Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore is set in spring, 1917, where war haunts the Cornish coastal village of Zennor: ships are being sunk by U-boats, strangers are treated with suspicion, & newspapers are full of spy-fever. Into this turmoil come D. H. Lawrence & his German wife Frieda, hoping to escape the war-fever that grips London. They befriend Clare Coyne, a young artist, struggling to console her beloved cousin John William who is on leave from the trenches & suffering from shell shock. Yet the dark tide of gossip & innuendo means that Zennor is neither a place of recovery nor of escape...