I read this story quite a few years ago and would dearly love to trace it.
An engraver/Carver of Tombstones is visited by an elderly woman seeking to have an epitaph for her parents engraved on a headstone. He offers a few suggestions which she likes and then gets on with the job.
Shortly after this he narrowly survives a nuclear holocaust which kills his wife and family. He is rescued (or so he believes) and transferred from smouldering crater to a submarine along with several other survivors.
Their "Rescuers" take them to the Arctic or some similar place and it turns out that the survivors are to be put on trial for destroying the world by what turns out to be the ghosts of all the children never born.
The Elderly woman turns out to be the ghost of his unborn daughter or something.
I'd love to find this book again and any help will be greatly appreciated.
An engraver/Carver of Tombstones is visited by an elderly woman seeking to have an epitaph for her parents engraved on a headstone. He offers a few suggestions which she likes and then gets on with the job.
Shortly after this he narrowly survives a nuclear holocaust which kills his wife and family. He is rescued (or so he believes) and transferred from smouldering crater to a submarine along with several other survivors.
Their "Rescuers" take them to the Arctic or some similar place and it turns out that the survivors are to be put on trial for destroying the world by what turns out to be the ghosts of all the children never born.
The Elderly woman turns out to be the ghost of his unborn daughter or something.
I'd love to find this book again and any help will be greatly appreciated.
