In 1407, the sea rages. Storms, floods and erosion are wrecking towns, harbours and livelihoods all along the Suffolk coast. Yet at this moment of upheaval, the villagers of Walberswick band together to build a monumental flint church, a vessel for a thousand souls that would take a century to complete and stand intact for just a century more.

Drawing on exceptionally rich and unexplored sources, Walberswick plunges readers into this strange, vanished world. It takes us along streets streaked silver with gutted herring, down wharves echoing with the shouts of Dutch sailors, and into the homes of the men and women who lived in the village during its brief, precarious heyday. It reconjures their desires and beliefs, friendships and squabbles, the objects and obligations that bound them together across generations. Through the history of one community, we glimpse what it meant to live and work, even to build something new, in the face of ruin - and the history that can be salvaged from it.