The Virgin and the Whale: A Love Story

Carl Nixon

Dec 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Julian Elfer

About this audiobook

A touching, clever novel about stories, about using them to create your own identity, and about the way they can forge bonds of love. It is 1919. Elizabeth Whitman is working as a nurse in the local hospital, waiting for her husband to return from war, though he is missing in action, 'presumed dead'. She keeps him alive for their four-year-old son, Jack, by telling the story of a man she calls The Balloonist, who went away in a hot-air balloon and has adventures in exotic countries. When she is asked to nurse a returned soldier whose head injury has reduced him to an animal-like state with no memory, Elizabeth starts telling her stories to him. It is through them that she manages to engage his interest and offer him a new life . . . in more ways than one.

About the author

Carl Nixon is an award-winning short story writer, novelist, and playwright. His first book, Fish 'n' Chip Shop Song and other stories went to number one on the New Zealand bestselling fiction list and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book.

British-born Julian Elfer is an award-winning New York City-based actor and audiobook narrator. With over 100 titles to his credit, Julian brings a unique facility for characterization in fiction and an empathy for the personalities and events of the past.