num_pages: 195
description: This is the story of four seasons in the life of Charles Wenmoth, a twenty-seven-year-old apprentice blacksmith and Methodist lay preacher in Cornwall in 1870. Life is at its hardest; poverty is everywhere. Charles crosses and recrosses the raw, beautiful landscape, attending to the sick and helping the poor, preaching in chapels with ever-dwindling congregations. He questions his faith along the way but never quite loses it, balancing it with the pleasure he takes in nature, the light in the skies, the colors of the earth, and in his attachment to a girl to whom he is drawn by the piety and patience she maintains despite her long illness.Inspired by the language of his great-great-grandfather's diaries and the Bible, influenced by authors as diverse as Hardy, Blake, and Faulkner, Peter Hobbs has created a first novel of breathtaking ambition and stylistic innovation, and of enormous emotional power.
language: English
title: The Short Day Dying
titlecomplete: The Short Day Dying
genres: Literary Fiction, Literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Religion
ratings_count: 179
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Holyer an Gof
category: The Cornish Literary Guild Salver, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Betty Trask Award
publisher: Mariner Books