Publisher's Synopsis
A recently widowed old man, MacIver, has holed up in the holiday home he shared with wife. He makes rules to 'stop the rot', as he and his house crumble away - what he must burn, when he should eat, how to write something every day. Gradually a strange and gripping parallel tale is born of men in the trenches of the Great War; while MacIver recalls, too, his own experiences of war. It's winter and he is dying; but his memories, tender, sardonic, even hopeful, glint as brightly as a gold watch in the Flanders mud.
