It’s a searingly hot summer in an unnamed year in the English countryside. There’s been no rain for weeks and the river through Little Nettlebed keeps thinning. Nerves are already frayed when a strange water creature is pulled from the dwindling river. The ferryman’s nervousness ratchets up each day as he sees his livelihood creak toward futility. If people can walk across the dry creek bed, they’ll have no use for his ferry.
And then people start hearing the howling, and someone claims to see something unnatural. Superstitions bake and crack in the summer sun as odd happenings continue.
The Mansfields are in mourning. The young women were raised by their grandparents, but now it’s only five girls and an indulgent grandfather with failing eyesight. They’re a bit different, a bit untamed, but harmless. Until one of them is seen transforming into a dog — or was she?
As tensions mount and rumors fly, the villagers attempt to cling to normalcy, but haymaking is dusty and deathly hot, and evenings at the tavern are poisoned by seditious accusations. There’s no doubt the things are about to boil over and the Mansfield girls are going to get scorched.
He had come from up the road where the girls had been walking, but Robin didn’t want to connect the two things. He wanted to exist in murkiness, in the uncertain summer dusk. In that moment, certainty appalled him… . ~Loc. 691
Author Xenobe Purvis pulls from classic stories of witchcraft, morality, and manners. With a characters named Hester (like Prynne), Cassandra (who tries to warn the villagers to tamp down their fears), Anne (like the sensible Bronte sister), and Grace (like the long-suffering servant of the madwoman in the attic), the novel has shades of allegory.
Yet, importantly, it is foremost a well-written story that builds tension through the points-of-view of multiple characters. It is immensely enjoyable in is own right and a reader needn’t catch any of the references to delight in it. The reader sees the accusations ricochet and facts change as they are filtered by varying perspectives. As the inevitable climax inches nearer, the unlikely truth becomes more than possible.
Ultimately, Purvis creates a world where the slightly uncanny makes the most sense.
My thanks to Henry Holt (Macmillan) for the review copy. Read via NetGalley.
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication date: August 5, 2025
Print length: 240 pages (English)
ISBN-13: 978-1250366382