The Golden Journey of Mr. Paradyne

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Cosmo Paradyne is a brilliant Chancery barrister, a dutiful husband, and a man so overburdened by routine that he seems to have forgotten how to live. He wakes in darkness believing he is aboard a ship, only to discover he is in a gipsy caravan in the French countryside, with no memory of how he came there and disturbing evidence that he has bought the caravan, horse, and stock in his own name. As he reasons through his disappearance, Paradyne retraces the last fragments of his former life: his daughter Viola's wedding, his strained marriage to the severe Martha, and the haunting music of a young flageolet player whose strange tune seems to have broken open his ordered world. In Chartres and beyond, he is drawn into a new existence of open roads, simple meals, and vivid physical pleasures, feeling for the first time the force of beauty, appetite, and instinct. But the mystery deepens when Martha's guarded reply suggests she knows more than she admits, and Paradyne confronts the possibility that his old self may have been spiritually dead. At the heart of his awakening lies the silver flageolet, a symbol of artistic mastery, destiny, and the freedom to choose a larger life.