First published 2019
Tom Brangwen works the family farm in rural England when he meets Lydia, a Polish widow who awakens something restless in him. Their marriage begins a saga that spans three generations of Brangwens, each wrestling with the pull between tradition and transformation. Tom and Lydia's daughter Anna marries her cousin Will, and their union becomes a battleground of wills and wants. Anna and Will's daughter Ursula grows up watching her parents' struggles and vows to forge her own path, yet finds herself caught in the same cycles of attraction and conflict that shaped her family. Each generation believes they can escape the patterns of those before them, but Lawrence shows how sexual desire and the need for connection bind them all. The Brangwens discover that love offers both salvation and destruction, that the very forces that create life also threaten to tear it apart. Through their stories, the novel explores how people use intimacy as both weapon and refuge in their search for meaning.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, generational-conflict
Setting: England, Poland, Rural England
Period: 20th Century
440 pages · Paperback · Independently Published