Summer

In North Dormer, a June afternoon brings a stranger in city clothes and stirs Charity Royall's impatience with her village. Charity works in the small memorial library, where old books gather damp and her crochet work fills the quiet hours. A visit to Nettleton has already shown her shops, a theatre and a world beyond the hills. Seeing the newcomer makes the familiar street seem smaller and revives her wish for something more.

The novel follows Charity's thoughts closely, setting bright weather and ordinary objects beside feelings of shame, envy and restlessness. Villagers repeatedly remind her that lawyer Royall brought her down from the Mountain as a child, making gratitude feel like an obligation. The library encounter brings curiosity, awkwardness and a hint of condescension into that constrained life. Readers interested in the pressures of place and social standing will find them expressed through one young woman's daily observations.