MASON'S RETREAT is a powerful, spellbindingly readable story about a family and a place. In 1936, Edward and Edith Mason return to America after a decade in England, with their two sons Simon and Sebastien. Their destination is an old family estate on the coast of Maryland, known as 'The Retreat'. They plan to revive it, and restore their own diminished fortune. But events take a very different turn, as the house, the beautiful watery landscape, and new and insidious pressures of class tension and sexual desire begin to exert a profound effect on the family and their world. Haunting, compelling, charged with subtle eroticism and a poignant sense of transience, this is a magnificent novel. It propels Tilghman into the ranks of the great American writers.