Penelope Wilcock

Sometimes things must get worse before they get better. Lent is cold, wet and austere, and the brothers long for their new abbot, John Hazell, to take up the reins. But on the first day of John's abbacy, Prior William de Bulmer rocks up at their door, seeking refuge from his numerous enemies.

The Hawk And The Dove is the opening title in this a series centered around the fictional Benedictine monastery of St Alcuin's, in Yorkshire, and set in the fourteenth century.

At the end of The Hawk and the Dove Father Peregrine is horribly injured in an attack originating from his previous life as a nobleman, before his calling to the monastic way. Now, badly crippled, he finds himself humbled to request assistance of his fellow monks in the simplest task.

In this concluding volume of The Hawk and The Dove trilogy, The Long Fall deals with the slow decline of Peregrine's powers as he slides gradually into dementia.