he award winning screenwriter of Shadowlands creates an English village and its rich cast of characters in a compulsively readable novel

Laura is content enough with her marriage and her children and her part-time job -- until a long-ago lover comes back into her life. Suddenly she remembers how once her life was passionate, and realises how the excitement has faded. How much happiness is she entitled to expect?

Unknown to Laura, every person in her Sussex village is living with their own unresolved inner dramas. None of them guesses at her crisis. Yet every decision they take has an impact on those round them. The hidden longings of a large cast of characters -- teacher, journalist, farmer, schoolboy, grandmother, and many more -- interweave in a gripping plot that reveals how intensely even the most ordinary lives are led. Nicholson's multi-stranded novel shows that life is euphoric and tragic, serious and ridiculous, brilliantly entertaining and, finally, deeply moving.'