April, 1946. A soldier, Michael, returns to Southampton on a troop ship, brutalised and in shock. Impulsively boarding a train to the tip of Cornwall, his life is shaped by his heart and the fragmented Britain he has returned to.
More than half a century later, Kit arrives in Norfolk to reluctantly take up his inheritance – a decommissioned lighthouse, half hidden in the shadows of the past, now sweeping its beam forward through time.
Luisa has, so far, lived through her children, reaching a point of invisibility. Like the tide, the constant push and pull of family has turned, and she is suspended, directionless.
When Kit and Luisa meet, neither can escape the inevitability of Michael’s split-second decision at the Southampton docks.
Moving between the post-war artists’ colonies in St Ives and present-day Norfolk, Raffaella Barker’s new novel explores the secret forces that shape our interactions across generations. From a Distance is a tender story of human connection and the yearning desire we have to belong.