1917. A rural English parish. The Great War grinds on in Flanders and the Somme, and in the quiet study of Reverend Thomas Perry-Hennington, a different kind of battle rages. The vicar sits before a blank page, pen in hand, unable to write his sermon. His sons are somewhere in the killing fields of France. His faith, once his anchor, has become a question he cannot answer. As he grapples with doubt that feels like betrayal, the village around him fractures: a local man named John Smith provokes outrage with his beliefs, and his daughter Edith arrives with troubling news that only deepens the tension. Snaith captures something rare in wartime fiction not the spectacle of battle, but the quiet agony of those left behind to wait, to believe, to question. This is a novel about what happens to faith when the Cross seems distant and the Cross of our sons hangs ever closer. For readers who cherish the psychological depth of early twentieth-century literary fiction, who understand that the deepest wars are fought in silence.
