A traveller on an InterCity train returning to London smells the burn of brakes as it hisses to a stop in the middle of the countryside. He sees a white-faced woman leap from the train and race to the aid of a sheep stranded on its back, unable to rise, in a field. Righting it, she turns, and he sees her face is full of tragedy. And not, he thinks, because she pulled the emergency lever and will face retribution.
Considering tragedies of his own, he does not intrude, but the image lodges in his mind: a strange but familiar despair, unable, despite itself, to ignore the desperation it recognizes in others.
From these seeds Mary Wesley draws out a plot of unforgettable impact: of loss, of release, of a necessarily comic acceptance of fate, of love the 'imaginative experience'. Rich in character and wit, and powerfully moving, this is a novel of the heart's pain and deliverance.
