A Dark and Stormy Night

De: Tom Stacey

Narrado por: Tom Stacey

Simon Chance, Anglican bishop and one-time missionary, has withdrawn in mid-life to research his enduring mentor Dante, creator of The Divine Comedy. The prolonged descent into dementia of his devoted wife Marigold has left him recently widowed. To recuperate, he is invited by a life-long confidante, Clare, to join a house party of several friends from their Oxford university days in the hills behind St Tropez in southern France.

This reunion of the "old set" is disarrayed by the free-fall collapse of global banking confidence.

Simon sets off on a walk in the forest of the Massif des Maures surrounding the villa, in search of a church abandoned centuries ago, he loses his way - in a "dark wood", as once experienced by Dante - while the night turns wild.

Marigold has not been the only love of Simon’s life. The passionate liaison of his younger life, pre-ordination, was with a student botanist. This very Evie, with her Parliamentarian spouse, is about to join the house party of Clare and a vital element in that intense, abandoned, youthful liaison is yet to be reconciled with Chance’s ordained self.

The working-through of the nature of love, body and soul, will redeem or destroy him. Or both.

©2018 Tom Stacey (P)2019 Tom Stacey