A moving tribute to Virginia Woolf’s classic novel To the Lighthouse, J.D. Engle’s Two Seasons continues the story of the intriguing artist Lily Briscoe, while standing on its own as a warmly involving work of fiction.

In the autumn five years after the 1927 novel’s triumphant end, the now married Lily Ramsay brings family and friends together at what is essentially a farewell dinner for her terminally ill husband. Five years later, spring finds us at the Ramsay Hebrides house of the earlier novel for the wedding of daughter Rose. Celebrated as a successful artist, yet reserved and only comfortable on the margins of social settings, Lily deals with the tensions ignited by her calmer but still difficult husband and the lingering resentments of his children.

True to Woolf’s theme of a senseless world temporarily leant meaningful order by artistic creation and warm human relations, J.D. Engle’s Two Seasons is the quietly riveting story of a remarkable family and of a strong female character struggling against her nature to ally these essential forces.