He owns the crumbling farmhouse at the end of a gravel drive, and he is also the stranger from the hotel bar the night before — the one who was never supposed to be seen again. A year of rural exile buys back a trust fund; the rent buys a chore list and a landlord who keeps his walls up. Forty-five chapters of attack geese, a village classroom and a widower's grief, ending with a school play and a boy who runs.