The Tenor Behind

About this book

Three months ago Neil Pugh sold the dairy herd his grandfather started. Now, in a Shropshire hill village in the frozen January of 2018, he wakes at twenty past four every morning for cows that are gone, and he does not know what he is for. When his wife pins a flyer for new bell ringers to the fridge, Neil climbs the church tower and finds he is the worst learner anyone there can remember. He has no rhythm, he is terrified of numbers, and a fifteen-year-old girl outpaces him in a fortnight. But the tower captain, eighty-one and running out of time, needs a sixth ringer to ring the tenor behind on Armistice morning. And on the wall hangs a board from 1913 with two men who never came home. What is a life worth when its work is over? Neil has eleven months to find out.