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'A striking debut, filled with folkloric mystery and yearning. Read it, then read it again' Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures 'A muddy, pastoral fable written with an equal measure of beauty and morbidity. Completely enthralling.' Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb 'An extraordinary sense of place and time, written by an exciting new voice' Radio Times (Best Books 2025) Who will cast the first stone? 1915, the Cabrach, Aberdeenshire. An isolated Scottish community is disturbed by a strange discovery: a body in a peat bog, perfectly preserved. Two people haul the body from the ground: Lizzie, the wife of a wealthy local landowner, and Johnny, a nomadic singer and farm hand. At hearthside and inn, people whisper: what have we unearthed? One unveiling brings others. For Lizzie, tenacious but trapped, the discovery reveals unanswered questions about her past while for Johnny, it threatens to uncover a history he’s trying to outrun. As their stories entwine, a series of unsettling events befalls the isolated community: ruinous weather, a damaged soldier, strange occurrences that cannot be explained. Against the echoes of distant war, and with the boundaries blurring between right and wrong, everyone is looking for someone to blame…
'A striking debut, filled with folkloric mystery and yearning. Read it, then read it again' Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures
'A muddy, pastoral fable written with an equal measure of beauty and morbidity. Completely enthralling.' Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb
'An extraordinary sense of place and time, written by an exciting new voice' Radio Times (Best Books 2025)
Who will cast the first stone?
1915, the Cabrach, Aberdeenshire. An isolated Scottish community is disturbed by a strange discovery: a body in a peat bog, perfectly preserved. Two people haul the body from the ground: Lizzie, the wife of a wealthy local landowner, and Johnny, a nomadic singer and farm hand. At hearthside and inn, people whisper: what have we unearthed?
One unveiling brings others. For Lizzie, tenacious but trapped, the discovery reveals unanswered questions about her past while for Johnny, it threatens to uncover a history he’s trying to outrun.
As their stories entwine, a series of unsettling events befalls the isolated community: ruinous weather, a damaged soldier, strange occurrences that cannot be explained. Against the echoes of distant war, and with the boundaries blurring between right and wrong, everyone is looking for someone to blame…