Weyward

Product Information

Go ahead. You know you want to. Judge this book by its cover. It’s probably one of the best of the year.

Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom. Violet is a young girl in a comparative life of privilege, living in a large manor, but is more interested in collecting insects and climbing trees than in becoming a proper young lady. She is generally ignored in favour of her brother Graham and is denied a future career in science because of her sex.

Emilia Hart

Conducting extensive research also helped her a lot as she read all manner of good books on the Pendle Witch Trials and several others across England. The good thing was that the Pendle Witch trials are among the most meticulously recorded thanks to Thomas Potts’s 1613 work “The Wonderful Discovery of Witches.” It seems like Weyward was maybe trying to fit in amongst the canon of female rage or revenge stories, but there's just something that's missing. This doesn't provide the catharsis that I want from a female revenge story, as there's too much time spent on women being brutalized. The justice is fleeting and the solution to being unsafe is being alone. In modern-day London, Kate flees her abusive live-in boyfriend before he can discover that she’s pregnant. Taking refuge in her great-aunt Violet’s cottage, she attempts to rebuild her life and her eroded identity.

The writing was beautiful with lush, descriptive scenes. It was easy to picture everything playing out before my eyes. Weyward spans three women's lives in three different centuries, connected by blood and one very unique gift. The writing's beautiful, the women are wonderful, and each narrative is as compelling as the next. Alive, vivid, gripping. Real magic." –– Abigail Dean, New York Times bestselling author of Girl ATold in separate narratives that intertwine ever tighter as their stories unfold, Weyward is an epic drama of three remarkable women finding their strength and power through the words of each other and a unique common legacy. We first meet young Altha in 1619 whose been imprisoned for allegedly murdering a neighbor and branded 'witch'. These are times where ignorance breeds fear especially of those with healing abilities. She became a student of her mother's ability to cure using plants rather than leeches and with it, a connection with animals and insects. Josephson said: “Altha, Violet and Kate have transfixed me. Though they are all from radically different times, these three women are connected by more than their family line: they share a resilience in the face of a kind of violence and abuse that is horribly unchanged over the centuries. The power these women discover within themselves and their affinity with the natural world is stunningly rendered by Emilia— Weyward is a wonderfully compelling, evocative debut and I know readers will fall under its spell as I have.” What's it About? An epic drama of three remarkable women finding their strength and power through the words of each other and a unique common legacy.