Sarah Winman burst onto the literary scene with her award winning novel, When God Was a Rabbit. Selling over 600,000 copies worldwide, the novel won Winman the New Writer of the Year Award from the Galaxy National Book Awards, as well as the Newton First Book Award in the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Born in Essex in the UK, Winman went to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for years in theatre, film and television. She has returned to the literary spotlight with her second novel, A Year of Marvellous Ways.

A Year of Marvellous Ways

Cornwall, 1947. Marvellous Ways is a 90-year-old woman who’s lived alone in a remote creek for nearly all her life. Recently she’s taken to spending her days sitting on the steps of her caravan with a pair of binoculars. She’s waiting for something – she’s not sure what, but she’ll know it when she sees it. Freddy Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the war. He’s agreed to fulfil a dying friend’s last wish and hand-deliver a letter to the boy’s father in Cornwall. But Freddy’s journey doesn’t go to plan, and sees him wash up in Marvellous’s creek, broken in body and spirit. When Marvellous comes to his aid, an unlikely friendship grows between the two.