The Crown Bard in Rhyl had always been there, on the main road on the way out of town. Despite living a five-minute walk away, I don't remember ever going there in my teens, but I must've passed it thousands of times. Local wisdom dictated it was where the rugby lads drank, while the pub directly opposite was where you'd find the football crowd.
Opening in the first decades of the 20th century, this luminous and tender novel follows, for most of its stately length, the interwoven lives of two married couples in the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio. One half of the first of these couples is Cal Jenkins, the sweet-tempered son of a traumatised first world war veteran, born in the spring of 1920 with (to use the parlance of the era) a mild deformity:
COVID-19 forced a shift in career considerations, leading to a move from Washington, DC to a self-employment friendly town in Arkansas, inspiring a new restaurant venture.