Mason's Retreat - Christopher Tilghman

Quickly read over an extremely wet May Bank Holiday weekend in Walton, another loan from the caravan's "library".

As with The Secret River, this is a novel set at an interesting time, in this case the 1930s, tracing the lives of a British-American family whose fortunes revive from the depths of the Depression, a revival that many are unaware is spurred on by nations preparing for war. The story moves from an industrial setting in England-between-the-wars to a delapidated plantation house bequeathed by a distant relative, and a world of farming and society still very much the same as it had been 50 years before.

But it is not really a novel of economics and business. Rather it's a gently paced novel, where the characters take centre stage. It put me in mind of the kind of thing Anne Tyler might write, if she were to set one of her novels in this period.

Amazon.co.uk link: Mason's Retreat - Christopher Tilghman