War widow and nurse Ruth Taylor is driven to go to the front lines to provide care to soldiers and join her husband Peter in eternal rest. Instead of being sent to her first-choice posting, Ruth ends up at D’Espérance, a huge mansion in the middle of nowhere that’s been converted into an army hospital/training camp for the wounded. Ruth knows that war nurses should be made of strong stuff, but when she sees her husband’s face in the wood grain of the door of D’Espérance, she loses consciousness and falls to the floor. Even after recovering from her initial shock, Ruth is certain that something’s not right with the house. The soldiers are men with skin pieced together like puzzles, all of them ravaged by war, but Major Black, the officer in charge, seems to have some future plan for them. When mysterious things begin happening throughout the house, Ruth is convinced she can figure out the truth if only she can get to the heart of what is happening behind D’Espérance's closed doors.
Brenchley (Desdaemona, as Ben Macallan, 2011, etc.) offers more questions than answers, creating a mysterious atmosphere without establishing a strong enough plot to make sense of it all.
