A Child of the Cloth

"I suppose, you would not believe that love did touch me once. It was the spring of 1939 and I was just nineteen years old... His name was Arthur Halfpenny." James E. Probetts once found himself sitting and talking to a lady of indeterminate years, who told him of a love that had touched her many years before. Captivated, he was encouraged to tell her tale through A Child of the Cloth, a story of undying love that could break the boundaries of a class divide. Set in the 1940s, the novella follows Amelia, the daughter of the Rector of St. Mary's. Having always seen herself as a child of the cloth, as both her father and grandfather were, she knows only of the church and nothing of the love of men. Until she meets Arthur, the son of an agricultural labourer, in the churchyard one day. For a man of Arthur's station in life, simply interacting with the daughter of a man of such a high church oversteps the class divide, so when they fall deeply in love they must fight for their...