The Story
Harry is 97 years old and has no intention of fading quietly. A widower, a veteran of the 20th century in all its chaos and wonder, he decides there is still something worth doing — and strikes out to find it. What he finds is a story that weaves his own extraordinary life across the century with a very modern problem: the hidden world of modern slavery.
"What is the point of reaching 97 if you don't do something about it?"
From the novel
The Happy Ending began as something deeply personal. When David Stokes became a long-distance carer for his nearly-hundred-year-old father, Charles Stokes (1913–2015), their daily phone conversations became the raw material for a novel. Harry's voice is Charles's voice. The humour, the dignity, the quiet refusal to be diminished — all of it is drawn from life.
It is not an Anglo-Saxon novel. But it is the book that unlocked the door. Writing The Happy Ending showed David what fiction could do that history cannot.