Purchase
Bloomsbury USA
February 2015
On Sale: January 27, 2015
Featuring: Thomas Maggs; Charles Rennie Mackintosh
304 pages ISBN: 162040883X EAN: 9781620408834 Kindle: 162040883X Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Fiction | Historical
It is 1914, and Thomas Maggs, son of the local publican, lives with his parents and sister in
a village on the Suffolk coast. He is the youngest child, and the only son surviving. Life is
quiet-shaped by the seasons, fishing and farming, the summer visitors, and the girls who come
from the Highlands every year to gut and pack the herring. Then one day a mysterious Scotsman arrives. To Thomas he looks like a detective in his black
cape and felted wool hat, puffing on his pipe like Sherlock Holmes. Mac is what the locals
call him when they whisper about him. And whisper they do, for he sets off on his walks at
unlikely hours and stops to examine the humblest flowers. He is seen on the beach, staring out
across the waves as if he's searching for clues. But Mac isn't a detective, he's the architect
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and together with his artist wife, they soon become a source of
fascination and wonder to Thomas. Yet just as Thomas and Mac's friendship begins to blossom, war with Germany is declared. The
summer guests flee and are replaced by regiments of soldiers, and as the brutality of war
weighs increasingly heavily on this coastal community, they become more suspicious of Mac and
his curious ways. In this story of an unlikely friendship, Esther Freud paints a vivid portrait of the home
front during World War I, and of a man who was one of the most brilliant and misunderstood
artists of his generation.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|