The Short Day Dying - Peter Hobbs (Paperback) 16-Mar-06 Winner of Betty Trask Award 2006. Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: First Novel Category 2005.

Charles Wenmoth is a blacksmith and Methodist lay-preacher in the wildest reaches of South-West England. It is 1870 and Wenmoth devotes his weekdays to work and the Sabbath to walking great distances to preach to dwindling congregations. Charles burns with faith - but it's a faith balanced by his pleasure in nature and the physical world around him. In his relationship with Harriet French, a blind girl who maintains her belief despite her debilitating condition, Wenmoth finds his fragile faith tested in the most trying of circumstances.