In two widely disparate novellas, Muriel Maddox explores different times and different settings as she takes us from the present in Switzerland where a past secret endangers the present to the 1930s in Rio de Janiero as the threat of war in Europe creates only one of the dilemmas for an American Navy wife. In "Noela," Paul Sanderson, a Los Angeles lawyer, and his wife Liz are vacationing at a Swiss hotel in Vevey on Lake Geneva. As Paul glances across the lake to France he suddenly realizes that he is opposite the village of Saint-Gingolph where his plane was shot down during the Second World War and where he was hidden by a French family. He wonders what has happened to Noela, with whom he had a brief love affair, and also the priest, Andre Romelin, who helped him escape. Paul had promised to return, but never did. When his wife runs into an old friend and makes a lunch date with her, he quickly takes a steamer across to Saint-Gingolph. The secret he discovers there threatens to...