On a summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis
witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister,
Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But
Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her
precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change
all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement
follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and
into the close of the twentieth century.