Merlin Hanbury-Tenison was burned out and in a very fragile psychological state. Additional personal traumas led Merlin and his wife to seek refuge on the family’s farm. There they found calm and healing.

This book reminds us that if we’re to achieve a positive future, we need to be able to imagine it. But we need to do this when, for most of us, this important human trait is undervalued and in danger of being snuffed out.

The story follows one, lonely driver as she tries to reconcile her initial support for the idea with her increasing isolation and dislocation from nature and from other people.

This is climate fiction dressed up in an imagined past where the Roman Empire persisted at least until the 1600s, helped by the discovery and exploitation of oil.

If there could be an entertaining read about the horrors of mass extinction, this is it!