A newly married couple from Harrogate purchased a manuscript from an antiquarian bookseller titled, The Universal Language Isn't Love or Music but Loneliness. Completed in 1940 by unknown author, William Travers, it was one of several items offered at the estate auction of a local family. Reading and discussing the work changed their lives ... and their marriage.
*****
Waking in hospital Lieutenant William Travers learns the war's over. The Armistice has been signed. Physically wounded and emotionally crippled, Travers shuns convention and, armed with an alto saxophone, turns his back on America to remain in Paris. He's a jazzman at heart, so a jazzman he'll remain. Throughout the Roaring '20s and Lean '30s, he encounters a bevy of characters: the artists of Montparnasse; the ladies at the Paris brothel; the curator at the Musee du Luxembourg; fellow band members in Paris; the stiff-collared Edwardians and the Bright Young Things who dance at London's Savoy Hotel; the fiery Yorkshire sheep farmer who is half-American; the hard-bitten landlady in London; and, the owner of a Soho night club - the epicentre of everything considered illegal. On the eve of the Blitz in September 1940, he decided to perform one more gig.

*****
A parallel narrative where the three protagonists, although separated by eighty years, confront the existential meaning of life.