The Wanderers

Shortlisted for the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2018, this beautiful and questing second novel in Tim Pears' acclaimed West Country trilogy follows two teenagers, bound by love yet divided by fate, as they forge separate paths in pre-First World War Devon and Cornwall. Lonely and grieving for her exiled best friend, thirteen-year-old Lottie feels like a prisoner. Her only solace is her study of the natural world around her father's estate: the strange profusion of its plants, the beauty and brutality of its predators, and its mysterious dances of life, death, and survival. Grazing on berries and sleeping in copses, Leo travels alone through the wild, strange tapestry of the West Country towards Penzance. But a wanderer is never alone for long, and when the gypsy wagons rattle into view, Leo is drawn into a colorful and dangerous world far beyond his imagination.