A short spellbinding novel about a WWI veteran finding a way to reenterand fully embracenormal life while spending the summer in an idyllic English village. In J. L. Carrs deeply charged poetic novel Tom Birkin a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painters depiction of the apocalypse Birkin finds that he himself has been restored to a new and hopeful attachment to life. But summer ends and with the work done Birkin must leave. Now long after as he reflects on the passage of time and the power of art he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost. show more