Description

Winter, 1904, and feisty twenty-one-year-old Ellen has been summoned back from her new life in Hoboken, New Jersey, to the family farm on windswept Gower, in a last bid to prevent the impending death of her alcoholic father.

On her return, she finds the family in disarray. Ailing William is gambling away large swathes of Thomas land; frustrated Eleanor is mourning the husband she once knew; and Ellen’s younger twin brothers face difficult choices. Ellen, tasked with putting her family’s lives in order, finds herself battling one impossible decision after another.

Resourceful, passionate, and forthright, can she remain in Gower, where being female still brings with it so many limitations? Can she endure being so close to her lost love? Will she choose home and duty, or excitement and opportunity across the Atlantic?

In giving birth to Ellen, Jane Fraser has created a new kick-ass Welsh heroine, born on the green lands of Gower but whose sights are raised to the horizon far away.
Euros Lyn, BAFTA-winning TV and film director

This lovely, lovely novel has its own quiet and insistent music, gently noting the turning of the seasons, beating to the daily rhythms of hard work even as it probes the way in which love can breed its own cruelties.
Jon Gower, author, and Hay Festival International Fellow

Fraser explores themes of womanhood, expectation, power, and identity with an unflinching eye, expertly revealing the ideas of a society on the edge of both land and change.
Rebecca F. John, Costa-shortlisted author

Advent has, in Ellen Thomas, one of the best central characters I have read in a while. Delighted for this this novel to be out in the world.
Gaia Banks, Literary Agent, Sheil Land Associates