Mr. Golightly's Holiday — Salley Vickers

1. holiday: a period in which a break is taken from work or studies for rest, travel, or recreation. [literally: holy day]

Many years ago, Mr. Golightly wrote a work of dramatic fiction that grew to be an astonishing international bestseller. But his reputation is on the decline and he finds himself badly out of touch with the modern world. He decides to take a holiday and comes to the historic village of Great Calne, hoping to use the opportunity to bring his great work up to date. But he soon finds that events take over his plans and that the themes he has written on are being strangely replicated in the lives of the villagers around him.

As he comes to know his neighbors better, Mr. Golightly begins to examine his attitude toward love and to ponder the terrible catastrophe of his only son's death. And we begin to learn the true, and extraordinary, identity of Mr. Golightly and the nature of the secret sorrow that haunts him and links him to his new friends.

Mysterious, light of touch, witty, and profound, Mr Golightly's Holiday confirms Salley Vickers's reputation as a writer of "fiction that entertains even as it considers serious questions of sin and redemption, love and loss" (Francine Prose, People).