From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of Birdsong, new fiction about love and war--five transporting stories and five unforgettable lives, linked across centuries.In Second World War Poland, a young prisoner closes his eyes and pictures going to bat on a sunlit English cricket ground.Across the yard of a Victorian poorhouse, a man is too ashamed to acknowledge the son he gave away.In a 19th-century French village, an old servant understands--suddenly and with awe--the meaning of the Bible story her master is reading to her.On a summer evening in the Catskills in 1971, a skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar and with a song that will send shivers through her listeners' skulls.A few years from now, in Italy, a gifted scientist discovers links between time and the human brain and between her lover's novel and his life.