From the prize-winning author of In the Place of Fallen Leaves comes a hypnotic pastoral novel about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911 1911. In a forgotten valley on the Devon-Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny & pale, Leo dreams of a job on the estate`s stud farm. He is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg, breeches & riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger`s hat, he discovers Miss Charlotte, the Master`s daughter. & so begins a friendship between the children, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries
- boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence.