This short novel is both a love story and a story about life and death age and youth and innocence and experience. Peter Allthorpe at the age of sixty-seven is confronted with the likelihood of his imminent death from terminal cancer. As he copes with this reality and its medical treatment and his own place in 'the scheme of things' he searches for what he calls 'a lucid life' and a 'quiet completeness' one he ultimately finds through his loving family.
