A Place Called Winter

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What to expect

** Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2015 **

To find yourself, sometimes you must lose everything.

A privileged elder son, and stammeringly shy, Harry Cane has followed convention at every step. Even the beginnings of an illicit, dangerous affair do little to shake the foundations of his muted existence - until the shock of discovery and the threat of arrest cost him everything.

Forced to abandon his wife and child, Harry signs up for emigration to the newly colonised Canadian prairies. Remote and unforgiving, his allotted homestead in a place called Winter is a world away from the golden suburbs of turn-of-the-century Edwardian England. And yet it is here, isolated in a seemingly harsh landscape, under the threat of war, madness and an evil man of undeniable magnetism that the fight for survival will reveal in Harry an inner strength and capacity for love beyond anything he has ever known before.

In this exquisite journey of self-discovery, loosely based on a real life family mystery, Patrick Gale has created an epic, intimate human drama, both brutal and breathtaking. It is a novel of secrets, sexuality and, ultimately, of great love.

(P)2015 Headline Digital

Critics Review

  • Patrick Gale has written a book which manages to be both tender and epic, and carries the unmistakeable tang of a true story. I loved it.

    Jojo Moyes
  • Absorbing, moving and beautifully written, with echoes of EM Forster which I found especially enjoyable.

    Amanda Craig
  • Beautifully structured around the warmest of warm hearts, but it’s also run through with something new: a devastating chill of loss, fear and exile which keeps you shaking your head and biting your lip in concern and shame and disbelief.

    Louisa Young
  • Bold, moving, intensely erotic – I couldn’t put down this tale of passion and endurance, told with such tenderness.

    Patricia Duncker
  • A tender tale of loss and love

    Sunday Times
  • This is an intensely personal book. Gale was inspired by a true tale from his own family history, and the depth of feeling shows. It’s one gay man reaching out to another across a century of social change, and his most powerfully moving novel yet

    Independent

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