Later adapted as a popular movie directed by John Ford, with a breakout performance by a young Roddy McDowall, this winning novel portrays life in a Welsh mining community before environmental abuses darken the landscape beyond repair. Llewellyn鈥檚 tone alternates beautifully between the lyrical and elegiac, with the book鈥檚 title, rendered notably in the past tense, as a reminder that some gifts of nature, once abused, can never return.
