As a young woman, Mavis Gaunt leaves post-war London to make a new life for herself in rural Devon, where she spent a few blissful months of her childhood as an evacuee. Living alone in the verdant hamlet of Shipleigh, she believes she's found a heaven on earth - until a violent tragedy brings trouble to paradise, and turns Mavis's idyllic solitude into a tormented, guarded isolation.

Decades later, the arrival of a newcomer to the village forces Mavis to make a final reckoning: should she take her horrible secret to the grave? Or, should she summon up ... Read moreher ghosts and, in doing so, lay them to rest? An Inventory of Heaven is a lyrical and intimate meditation on the rural life, falling in love and the long passing of time.