The Hermit is dead but his guilt lives on in his children – guilt which stems from the ivory box he found in India during WW2 and the boy he gave it to.

Does the ivory box hold the power to send mad whoever owns it? Most rational people would think that nonsense but many of them would hold an element of doubt.

Ever practical Anne also thinks it is nonsense, but even she wavers at times. The only person who has no doubt is the artist Alice, and her insistence that Anne solve the mystery follows a thread of family fortune starting with the birth of Thomas, in 1730, and ending in a surprising conclusion nearly three centuries on.

In The Song of the Ivory Box, A.C. Llewellyn creates a mysterious back story for the ivory box featured in her autobiography, Loki's Joke.