One Woman

Billed as the second part of a romance of Sussex, Alfred Ollivant’s novel follows the newly married Ruth Boam and Ernie Caspar as they try to build an ordinary working life against the pull of family, poverty, and their own tempers. Ollivant writes the Sussex downs and the rhythms of village labor with real tenderness, and his interest lies less in incident than in the slow test that daily marriage puts to affection. The tone is earnest and rooted in place, closer to a study of character than a plot-driven story. Readers who know Ollivant only for his famous sheepdog novel will find a quieter, more domestic side of him here. This free PDF and EPUB edition returns it to circulation.