- This is a simple story but an exquisitely beautiful and powerful one. It will stay with you.
- It's a follow up to Barry's previous and multiple award winning novel Days Without End, published in 2016. It’s not absolutely necessary to have read this classic but it will enrich your experience of the continuing tale. (Here are my unpublished notes on it).
- The time is the 1870s in the aftermath of the American Civil War. We are in Tennessee, a border state between the South and the North. Enmities and hatreds linger. The racism is of course ugly, against both Indians and Blacks.
- They are rough, primitive times. The story acknowledges the grievous sins, and celebrates the simple virtues.
- Barry's characters have old and quaint American names: Wynkle King, Lige Magan, Tach Petrie, Tennyson and Rosalee Bouguereau and others. They add colour to the rich mosaic.
- Winona, a teenager who narrates the story in her youthful, semi literate, but brilliantly rendered patois, is an Indian orphan adopted by former soldiers who are gay and now living quietly together on a farm. Thomas, who Winona refers to as 'mother', dresses frequently as a woman. He and his partner, John, love Winona intensely.
- Winona is brutally raped and traumatised by an unknown perpetrator. She cannot recall his identity, but she is determined to uncover it.
- So this seemingly simple story of love and devotion, of friendship, loyalty and family, is tragically deepened and transformed. It becomes unputdownable as it builds to a dramatic and satisfying conclusion.
- This is a must read, from an author at the height of his powers.
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