Sheer Off: A Tale

Ned Franks lost his arm to the sea, but not his determination to rebuild. Now the schoolmaster of the village Colme, he wages a quieter war against poverty and neglect, confronting the wretched almshouses where his neighbors suffer and reaching across to John Sands, whose household crumbles under his wife's alcoholism. This is Victorian England at its granular worst: the stingy charity, the gossip that masquerades as concern, the men who preach peace while poking fires in other men's grates. A. L. O. E. constructs a village of sharp contrasts: Nancy's bitter envy, Ben Stone's smooth tongue and smoother woodwork, and at the center, a one-armed sailor turned teacher who refuses to accept that charity should cost nothing or change nothing. The novel pulses with earnest social purpose, examining what it truly costs to help your neighbor when your neighbor is drowning in drink and the community would rather look away.