Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

This is a quiet tale of Major Ernest Pettigrew, an honor-bound Englishman and widower, who is the very embodiment of duty and pride. He lives in his childhood home in the quaint village of Edgecombe St. Mary in Sussex, England. As the story unfolds, the major is mourning the loss of his younger brother, Bertie, while grieving again for his wife who died several years ago. But on the flip side Pettigrew is trying to get back Bertie's antique Churchill shotgun—part of a set that the boys' father split between them, but which Bertie's widow doesn't want to hand over. While the major is eager to reunite the pair for tradition's sake, his son, Roger, has plans to sell the heirloom set to a collector for a tidy sum.

As he frets over the guns, the major develops a friendship with Jasmina Ali—the Pakistani widow of the local food shop owner in town. Mrs. Ali is a 50-something Pakistani widow who shares his love of Kipling and his wry look at the world in which they both reside.

Time passes and the more things change the more things stay the same as Pettigrew finds himself part of the gossip and he flounders on what is polite and what is the right thing to do. He struggles to understand his own son whom he discovering he has little in common with yet he yearns to have around.

This story is not dramatic and will not make you sit on the edge of your seat but I just kept turning the pages and enjoy this lovely quiet story about life.