Return Journey — R.F. Delderfield

The hero of R.F. Delderfield's memorable and haunting novel is Kent ("Pip") Stuart, a young man growing up in a small English seaside town, engaged to a pretty, sensible local girl, but momentarily dazzled by the possibility of higher things.

A master storyteller, R.F. Delderfield writes with extraordinary drama and emotion of Pip's surprising coming of age--an involvement with the local doctor's wife, whom he thinks he is rescuing fro a bad marriage, and the gradual discovery, as their love affair destroys the lives and peace of the people around them, that life is more dangerous and complicated than it seems, even in a small town...

Like all of R.F. Delderfield's fiction, Return Journey is brilliantly and triumphantly readable, the work of a master storyteller whom the New York Times has compared to such giants of the novel as Galsworthy and Trollope.