When young Philip Somerton and his wife Grace inherit a general store in the Western town of Claybanks, they leave behind the refined pleasures of New York for something far more complicated than adventure. The couple arrives expecting to claim their fortune, only to discover that running a business in a rough frontier town requires skills no Manhattan clerk ever learned. Caleb Wright, the store's enigmatic clerk, proves to be neither the helpful employee nor the simple frontier type they anticipated. Habberton writes with sharp observational humor about the collision between urban pretension and rural reality, tracing how the Somertons' certainties crumble against the stubborn particulars of Western life. The novel works both as gentle comedy of manners and as a quieter meditation on what we sacrifice when we reach for something new.
