If you're a fan of George MacDonald of Frederick Buechner, you'll love this novel. What is it like to be a teacher-to see one's great aspirations for his or her students bent, broken, or re-fashioned by the twists and turns of fortune? Now at the very end of his life, Robert Henryson looks back on a time of great tumult. Based on an event from Scottish history--the hanging of certain retainers of King James III by disgruntled Scottish noblemen at Lauder Bridge in 1482-the novel follows the lives of four characters whose lives are inextricably linked to one another by the fatal event at Lauder and by their relationship to Henryson, their old schoolmaster.