Waverley James has come to Russia to kill himself.
He has pain in him enough and now this: he is going blind.
Officially, he is in Nizhny Novgorod to attend Russian classes and to teach English. But he intends on neither. The plan is to numb himself in the distance from his father. To sever bonds. To ready himself.
The plan is flawed.
From the moment Waverley arrives, there are people waiting to attach their emotion to his: Mikhail - Waverley’s self-appointed guide to ‘quintessential Russian experiences’. Winter-skinned Natalya. ‘Non-Hollywood vampire’ Vadik. The language school boss who doesn’t want Waverley to teach but to lunch with her VIP clients. And Erwin, an eighty-one year-old Christian missionary of Russian-German stock who has two stories to tell: one of the girl sixty years his junior he fell in love with, the other of his sin in a concentration camp during the war.
Then there's someone who keeps leaving Waverley Bible quotes that speak out against his suicide. Someone who knows.
Complete at 80,000 words.
Note: Although aimed at a universal readership of literary fiction, the novel contains a reasonable amount of Scottish phrasing and vocabulary.