The Long Dry

The animal facts of human life—need, love, children, exhaustion, incapacity, death—come alive in one farmer’s long, hot day.

On a long, hot day, Gareth searches for a missing pregnant cow. A dog must be put down, there are ducks to go in the pond, there are children, and there is Kate, his wife, who may be an uncrossable distance from him. Jones’s rural Wales is alive with the necessities of our own animal instincts and most human longing.