The Distance Between Things

Calder Vale, 1976.Arthur Fletcher has spent more than thirty years fixing machines at Wetherby Engineering. His wife Jean has quietly given up on the things she once wanted. Their fourteen-year-old son Peter is already looking beyond the town, convinced that somewhere else must be better.Then, one cold evening, Arthur finds an injured man in a field beside the railway.He calls himself Michael.He is polite, observant, unexpectedly funny, and very clearly not from Calder Vale. Before long he is sitting at the Fletcher kitchen table, listening to David Bowie, asking awkward questions and becoming part of a family that had not realised how much it needed to change.But Michael has brought more than mystery with him. His presence is being detected, his body is beginning to fail, and somewhere beyond Wensley Road, other people are starting to look for him.As the government closes in and old certainties begin to shift, Arthur, Jean and Peter are forced to decide what matters more: proof, safety, loyalty, or simply giving someone a place to belong.The Distance Between Things is a quiet, wry and melancholy novel about family, usefulness, distance, and what it means to make room for another person.