At Start and Finish

A man returns to the England of his youth and finds it both familiar and strange. Years ago, he left these streets for American shores, where he built a life as a professional runner and later as a college trainer. Now, standing in Trafalgar Square with his old friend Colonel Patterson, he traces the arc of his transformation from Englishman to something more complicated - a man who belongs fully to neither world yet draws strength from both. The novel unfolds in conversations and memories, tracing friendships forged in youth and tested by distance, and the athletic contests that bridge cultures like no other language. There is wit here, and warmth, and a quiet melancholy for roads not taken. The upcoming university games promise competition and camaraderie in equal measure, but what really matters is what the protagonist discovers about himself: that home is not a place but a conversation between who you were and who you've become.