In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives. On a tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, chooses to stay behind the eccentric Mr. Watts , who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens's classic "Great Expectations".