The Winter Vault — Anne Michaels

In 1964, a newly married couple settles into a Nile River houseboat. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for moving the towering figures of Abu Simbel above the rapidly rising waters of the Aswan Dam.

At the edge of a world about to be lost forever, Avery and and his wife, Jean, begin to create their own world. But it will not be enough to bind them when tragedy strikes and they go back to separate lives in Toronto. There Jean meets Lucian, a Polish artist whose haunting stories of his shattered childhood in occupied Warsaw draw her further away from Avery. But, in time, he will also show her the way back to consolation and forgiveness.