Michael Dirda is a book critic for the Washington Post. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993. - Wikipedia
Maurice Allington has reached middle age and is haunted by death. As he says, “I honestly can’t see why everybody who isn’t a child, everybody who’s theoretically old enough to have understood what death means, doesn’t spend all his time thinking about it. It’s a pretty arresting thought.” He also happens to own and run a country inn that is haunted.