The Western Wind

In the isolated medieval village of Oakham in 1491, the wealthy landowner Thomas Newman has drowned in the swollen river, and his body has washed away. In the four days before Lent, the parish priest John Reve hears confessions, fends off a rural dean hunting for a murderer, and tries to understand what happened to a man whose money and ideas were quietly remaking the village. Harvey tells the story in reverse, beginning on Shrove Tuesday and moving backward day by day toward the death itself, so the reader circles the truth rather than marching toward it. Beneath the mystery runs a hushed meditation on faith, doubt, water, isolation, and a way of life on the edge of vanishing.