The Short Day Dying

Charles Wenmoth is a young blacksmith and Methodist lay-preacher in the furthest, wildest reaches of south-west England. It is 1870 and preachers such as Wenmoth devote weekdays to work and the Sabbath to walking great distances across country to preach, morning and evening, to ever-dwindling congregations. Wenmoth burns with faith, but it is a faith balanced by an instinctive Gnosticism: a pleasure in nature and the reality of the world around him. His only distraction is a local blind girl, Harriet French, who he is drawn to by the faith she maintains despite her debilitating condition.

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Shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. In a magical act of lyrical ventriloquism, Peter Hobbs' debut novel recreates a world on the brink of change and a character at the edge of crisis. Gloriously redemptive, powerful and compassionate, The Short Day Dying is a love story of great power and imaginative richness.