When a crisis erupts in his tiny parish—touching on questions of ritual, conscience, and clerical authority—he must decide what he truly believes and what he is willing to sacrifice for it. Around him, the townspeople of Carlingford pursue their own ambitions and heartaches, forming a richly observed tapestry of Victorian provincial life in which public reputation and private sorrow are always entangled.
Tender, shrewd, and quietly devastating, this is a novel about vocation and compromise, love and duty, and the cost of remaining true to oneself in a world that rewards accommodation.