John Pentecost returns his family farm each autumn to gather the sheep down from the moors, but this year his grandfather has died, and with him the village's protection from the Devil. By the Costa First Novel Award-winning author of
The Loney. 25,000 first printing.
John Pentecost returns to his family farm each autumn to gather the sheep down from the moors, but this year his grandfather has died, and with him the village's protection from the Devil.
"A gripping and unsettling new novel by the award-winning author of The Loney that asks how much we owe to tradition, and how far we will go to preserve it"--
A new novel by the author of The Loney, which was praised by Stephen King as "an amazing piece of fiction."
In the wink of an eye, as quick as a flea,
The Devil he jumped from me to thee.
And only when the Devil had gone,
Did I know that he and I'd been one . . .
Every autumn, John Pentecost returns to the farm where he grew up, to help gather the sheep down from the moors for the winter. Very little changes in the Endlands, but this year, his grandfather—the Gaffer—has died and John's new wife, Katherine, is accompanying him for the first time.
Each year, the Gaffer would redraw the boundary lines of the village, with pen and paper but also through the remembrance of tales and timeless communal rituals, which keep the sheep safe from the Devil. But as the farmers of the Endlands bury the Gaffer and prepare to gather the sheep, they begin to wonder whether they've let the Devil in after all.
A new novel by the author of The Loney, which was praised by Stephen King as "an amazing piece of fiction."
