In Autumn, Will Ross tells his own story in the first-person ramble of a widower making up for lost words…. He wants, without wholly understanding why, to stay where he and his dead wife Helen always planned to live. His decision is vindicated in the end. Light sharpens, time quickens. "I'm here," he thinks….

What restores his feeling of belonging in the world is not an act of imagination or memory but an intuitive response to what destiny offers. After a storm at sea, he finds a runaway boy asleep in the tree house on his property. Will allows him to shelter there, watches over him, and then bids him set off before Will must turn him in to authorities like the telephone company repairman who keeps trying to tell Will what to do. His farewell to the boy is a gesture he couldn't perform when his wife...