When eighteen year-old Nat Kempsey goes missing in the Berwyn mountains, his disappearance reveals a secret that his own father, Pete Kempsey, has kept for thirty-five years, drawn as he was to the same remote land, at the same age, by a phenomenon mysterious and unexplained. A cut-throat journalist is convinced something is awry with Nat's story, and it soon becomes clear that the lives of both Nat and his father are running in disconcerting parallels…

After Brock is a story of infatuation, fraught relationships and dysfunctional families – exploring the boundaries between myth and reality, and humanity's relationship with the natural world.

"Animal magic on the borders between youth and maturity."
The Independent

"After Brock shows how natural drama infuses human behaviour with resonant meaning, and vice versa."
The Spectator

"Binding successfully combines a riveting story with a deeper contemplation of the human condition."
gwales.com

Paul Binding is a novelist, critic, poet and cultural historian. Four of his books have recently been reissued by Faber Finds: Lorca (2009), The Still Moment: Eudora Welty (2009), St Martin's Ride (2009) and My Cousin the Writer (2010). A regular reviewer for the Guardian, the Independent and the TLS, he lives in the Marches.