'An engulfing, deeply humane novel about the triumphs and failures of human connection' Marina Kemp

Patrick Gale, the bestselling and Costa-shortlisted author of A Place Called Winter, resumes Harry Cane's epic journey as he returns to England for the first time in forty years. But will his family welcome him back? A story of love and sexuality, belonging and brutality, from 'a rare kind of storyteller' (Sarah Winman).

When Harry Cane, a veteran Canadian wheat farmer, is forced to sell up and sail back to an England transformed by two world wars, his arrival triggers unwelcome examination both for himself, and those in his family he has left behind or never even met.

In Liverpool, his daughter feels duty bound to take him in, but is riven with doubt and ambushed by a long buried anger with her father. There are others, though, who are helped by his presence: a granddaughter who is able to deal with an unspoken trauma at last, and her husband, who finally feels seen for who he really is.

Will Harry stay and make a new life before it's too late, or will he be cast out once more, for understanding and witnessing too much?

A Radio 2 Book Club pick

'The feel of a small-scale epic' - James Cahill
'The comedy has a Forsterian ease in its profound Englishness' - Guardian
'Rich in emotional truth' - Clare Chambers
'Patrick Gale has a stature afforded to few literary novelists' - Telegraph
'Miraculous, mischievous and quietly devastating' - Rachel Joyce