Lucie Borja knew right from the beginning. It was wrong to buy the château sitting vast and grey in that sleepy Provençale village. There was something sad about it, she said. They wouldn’t be happy there. But there was no stopping her husband. He was determined to leave the war and Paris behind and start over, right in the middle of nowhere, just them and the château and a courtyard full of sinister birds.
Half a century later, the château is empty – up for sale – the vineyard has gone to seed, and the English woman taking photographs has no idea that her quiet explorations are spreading rumours in the village. For Kate Glover, the château offers an escape from a stifling marriage, a way out of her mundane London life. What she cannot see, behind the apparent tranquillity of the place, are the atrocities that issue from the past.
As the grapes fatten on the vines and the summer heat intensifies, Kate’s dream of occupation grows ever richer and more fertile and she becomes embroiled in a dangerous, obsessive game with the legacies of the château.
Flitting between perspectives, We All Ran Into the Sunlight is a powerful, entrancing novel, which explores the disarming emotions that attend our compulsion to put down roots and experience home. It shows how all of us have to dance between the shadows that memory casts in order to survive.

About the author

Natalie Young has worked for The Times for several years. She has two children and lives in London. This is her first novel.

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