When the handsome Frenchman Phillippe Durand is faced with a trip abroad with his children, he approaches Jennifer with an offer: a summer job as the twins' nanny -- on the idyllic island of Tahiti. Jennifer forges a tentative friendship with her employer and begins to put together the pieces of this mysterious man, a former member of the Mormon Church haunted by a past fraught with death and heartbreak.
Severity reflects intensity, not value — “central theme” means a warning is a core part of the book, not that the book is bad.