Front Step PressEst. 2026

The Long Afternoon · Book One

Homeward

Notes on Leaving Home and Finding It Again

“You know you’ve left home when you start calling it ‘back home.’”

Walt Penney grew up in a stone village in the English dales and has spent fifty winters on the Canadian prairie. In Homeward he looks back at both places: the church clock that loses two minutes every Thursday, his mother’s four-minute kettle, the bus that carried him away, and the porch light he still leaves on. Fifty short observations, each paired with a quiet watercolour.

Hardcover6 × 9 in · full colour · $29.99
Paperback6 × 9 in · full colour · $19.99
Coming soon to Amazon Look inside
The cover of Homeward: a stone cottage at night with its porch light on and a white cat waiting on the step.

Look inside

One page to look at, one to linger on

Every spread pairs a watercolour with a single line from Walt. Some pages carry a short story. Most leave room to remember your own.

Watercolour of a boy with a red suitcase walking up a lane between stone walls, a small dark cat at his heel.

You can leave a place in an afternoon. It takes years to leave it properly.

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Watercolour of an old kettle and two mugs on a windowsill, a blue terraced house outside in the dusk.

Mum’s kettle took four minutes. I could have boiled water faster anywhere. I never wanted to.

She filled it too full; she always had. While it rumbled we stood at the counter talking about nothing, the weather, the neighbour’s new fence. By the time it clicked off, I’d usually said the thing I came home to say.

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Watercolour of a pair of old work boots by a back door, red poppies growing up out of them.

My father’s boots stayed by the back door long after his feet stopped needing them.

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The series

The Long Afternoon

Small illustrated books for the quieter years of life. Each one gathers Walt Penney’s observations on a single part of a long life, paired with soft watercolours. Books to keep, and books to give.

The cover of Homeward. Book One · Out now

Homeward

On leaving home, going back, and the two places Walt calls home.

Book Two · In the works

The Second Half

“At seventy-four I’ve finally learned to walk at the speed of the dog.”

Getting older, with good humour and no self-pity.

Book Three · In the works

Still Here

“The funeral isn’t the hard part. It’s the first time you buy one of something.”

Love and loss, and the life that carries on after.

Ten books are planned in The Long Afternoon. More will appear here as Walt finishes them.

Watercolour of Walt, an elderly man in a flat cap and long brown coat carrying an orange bag, looking at a stone cottage.

The narrator

Meet Walt Penney

Walt is seventy-four. He grew up in a small stone village in the English dales, came to Canada at twenty-four, and taught woodworking at a prairie high school for thirty-four years. He measures twice, fixes hinges that aren’t broken, and says less than he feels.

He was married to Peg for forty-six years. A white cat that isn’t his sits on his front step most evenings. She disagrees about whose cat she is. Look for her in every book.

  • BornA dales village, England
  • Home nowFifty prairie winters
  • Always carriesAn orange shopping bag
  • Never doesGive advice he wasn’t asked for

The author

Len Canning

Len Canning wrote The Long Afternoon to make sense of his own passing years. Walt isn’t Len, but he’s walked a lot of the same lanes.

Len isn’t a painter, so he worked with AI image tools to make the pictures, choosing and shaping each one until it looked the way the memory felt.