The Big Snow - Tapa dura

Northern Ireland, 1963. This is the story of a time muffled and made claustrophobic by unprecedented snow falls, and of people caught in the slow dance of this frozen land. In a house with windows flung defiantly wide, a wife dies before her husband can make his confession. Her coffin is pulled to the church on a sledge by Peter, a young man engulfed by his first feelings of love for an unattainable woman. Elsewhere, an old woman searches desperately for a wedding dress in her dream of love. When the electricity fails, a lonely headmaster is forced to close his school and in shadowy candlelight he is tempted into indiscretion. Meanwhile, in the very heart of the city, the purity of snow is tainted by the murder of a young woman and as one man begins to unravel the dark secrets of the city, he knows he is in race against time to find the murderer before the snow melts. David Park peers into the souls of his characters with an insight and compassion that makes this flawed slice of humanity somehow glorious. He is a writer of rare dignity and talent.

David Park has published three novels and one volume of short stories. He was the winner of the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature and a twice winner of the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award. He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland with his wife and two children.