Author Description

GENERAL & LITERARY FICTION. It is 1841. Patty Clare is married to John Clare: peasant poet, genius and madman. Travelling home one day, Patty is shocked to find her husband sitting at the side of the road, having absconded from a lunatic asylum over 80 miles away. Delighted to see him and hopeful that his condition has improved, she is devastated when it becomes clear that John's mental health has deteriorated still further, and he now thinks himself married twice: to both Patty and his childhood sweetheart, Mary Joyce, a woman who has been dead for more than three years. Patty still loves John deeply but he seems lost to her, obsessed with the idealised memory of a woman that she cannot possibly match. She finds herself driven to distraction, consumed with jealousy and struggling to cope with her large, unruly family. But with John descending further into his own delusions, hope seems to be fading that he will ever be restored to the man she married.