A vicar of absolute faith discovers his daughter is pregnant by an officer going back to the front, and must choose between his religion and his child. Galsworthy trained as a barrister, never practiced, and was told to write by Joseph Conrad, then a ship's first mate; this 1919 novel was written while the war was still in the room, and the vicar is drawn with respect, which is what makes it hurt. Fifty-nine plates, among them portraits by William Orpen and John Lavery, gather the faces and landscapes of the world Galsworthy's vicar moves through, where the war at the front and the village at home press on the same conscience.
