SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2020

A love divided. A world torn in two. A return. A redemption.

A stirring, exquisitely rendered tale of homecoming; the final instalment in Tim Pears’s epic West Country Trilogy

It is 1916. Lottie Prideaux rides the winding lanes of her childhood on her motorcycle, defying the expectations of her class and sex as she trains to be a vet. Meanwhile young Leo Sercombe finds himself a long way from home, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary in the middle of the ocean. Here life is raw, bloody and vivid, with death never more than a heartbeat away.

As Leo and Lottie wander in this strange and brave new world, and as war, loss, violence and betrayal conspire to tear asunder the ties that bind the past, present and future together, can even the most fated of returns – and redemptions – hope to come to pass?