Allen & Unwin The Short Day Dying book Literary fiction English Paperback 208 pages

Charles Wenmoth is a young blacksmith and Methodist lay-preacher in the furthest, wildest reaches of south-west England. It is 1870 and preachers such as Wenmoth devote the weekdays to work and the Sabbath to walking great distances across country to preach morning and evening to ever dwindling congregations. Wenmoth himself burns with faith, but it is a faith balanced by an instinctive agnosticism: a pleasure in nature and the reality of the world around him. His only distraction is a local blind girl, Harriet French, who he is drawn to by the faith she maintains despite her debilitating condition. Over the course of one long Sabbath, after preaching and travelling through the day, Wenmoth returns to his village and devastating news. Will he finally summon the courage and try to face the doubt that has threatened to consume him for years past? In a magical act of lyrical ventriloquism, Peter Hobbs' debut novel recreates a world on the brink of change and a character at the edge of crisis. Gloriously redemptive, powerful and compassionate, The Short Day Dying is a love story of great power and imaginative richness.