Clare Mackintosh Finds the Life of the Party

It's a Wednesday afternoon in Bala, in mountainous North Wales, near the glacial lake known to locals as Llyn Tegid, and British author Clare Mackintosh is at her 18th-century Georgian manor house, reflecting over Zoom on the pleasures of small-town living. "We have a high street, shops, and a supermarket, then not a lot more for an hour or so," says Mackintosh, who impulsively moved from England to Wales in 2016 with her husband and three kids to start a new life and reconnect as a family. "If I walk out my front door, I'm in town, and if I walk out the back, I pass my chickens and my sheep; say hello to my goat, Pete, who's quite the local celebrity; and then get to the lake across the fields. It's wonderful. And Welsh is spoken everywhere."