Simon Van Booy

"Over the course of a single week in a small English village, a widowed octogenarian who has spent her last years alone, ready to die, discovers an unexpected reason to live. After living abroad for sixty years, Helen Cartwright returns to the English town where she was born. She buys a nondescript suburban house on Westminster Crescent, a nondescript suburban street, and settles into a repetitive, reclusive existence: "Each day was an impersonation...

Inspired by true events, this is a harrowing and enchanting story of how one man's act of mercy during World War II changed the lives of strangers, and how they each discover the astonishing truth of their connection. Whether they are pursued by Nazi soldiers, old age, shame, deformity, disease, or regret, the characters in this utterly compelling novel discover in their, darkest moments of fear and isolation that they are not alone, that they were...