Worthless Men

It's market day in an English city two years into the Great War. The farmers are coming in from the countryside, the cattle are being driven through the streets, and that evening a trainload of wounded soldiers is due to arrive. At the local mansion, its new hospital tents are ready, and Montague Beckwith, himself a psychological casualty of the war, waits. In the town's poorest quarter, Winnie Barley prays that Walter, her missing son, will be on the train but that her violent husband is not. In the pharmacy, Gertie Dobson dreams of romance, while her father keeps unsuitable men at bay. Walter, a ghostly presence, watches as the girl he loved from a distance is drawn into Montague's orbit. Andrew Cowan creates a panoramic, vividly detailed portrait of a community where the war influences everyone, from factories producing barbed wire to women taking men's roles and boys questioning the call to fight. The story explores betrayal and the valiance of the so-called worthless ones.