"Bowman, a robust storyteller, keeps us hooked in this first U.S. publication for its Irish author. A knife flashes and a boy is cut in the opening sentence. It’s a minor injury in a children’s scuffle, but also a portent of the violence ahead. The setting is Gigondas, a village in a wine-making region of Provence. Most of the action takes place in the summer of 1920, when the fight victim, Christian Aragon, the narrator, is almost 17 and about to graduate from high school. It’s only two years since the end of the Great War, and his father expects Christian to succeed him as a wine-maker, but he’s resisting; he intends to make his own way in life. Christian has fallen in love with his beautiful 24-year-old geography teacher Vivienne Pleyden, who reciprocates it on an officially sanctioned school trip to Avignon. What might have been messy and mawkish is redeemed by Bowman’s fresh, invigorating prose. Back in Gigondas, everything changes. There’s a murder, a crime of passion, followed by a courtroom drama and its lengthy aftermath. From the rhythms of a coming-of-age story, with its incremental discoveries, we are plunged into a maelstrom."    —Kirkus

"A coming of age tale that, like many other examples from the genre, hinges on forbidden love and the tension between fathers and sons. What separates this tale from others like it, however, is the setting: Provence in the wake of World War I. Though he lives in Ireland, the South of France comes alive in all of its verdant glory throughout the novel. Bowman is also adept at bringing the vast and irregular geography of the human heart to life as well."  —Small Press Reviews  

CONOR BOWMAN lives in Ireland and practices law, though he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet. He is married to a wonderful woman who saved
him from himself. They have four fabulous children and an apple tree. His previous books are Wasting By Degrees (a novel) and Life and Death and in Between (a collection of short stories).