When Elinor’s daughter, Rowena, is found poisoned and dead in an animal trough, Elinor is sure the local parish priest is to blame.
A ceramic artist by trade and influenced by her late grandmother’s interest in supernatural magic, Elinor crafts an immortelle for Rowena’s grave and attempts to capture the girl’s spirit in the clay model of a starling. Soon she is inundated with requests for immortelles and the more immersed in the craft she becomes, the greater her powers grow.
As the dead share their secrets with grieving Elinor, she learns the sordid truth of what happened to her beloved daughter and plots a revenge so hideous, it must be kept a secret forever.
About the Author
Catherine McCarthy grew up in the industrial valleys of South Wales where she went on to teach in primary education for almost three decades. Having been ‘shown the light’ by her mother, who had the tradition of oral story-telling down to a fine art, she quickly developed an insatiable appetite for all things literary.
Her first published novel, The Gatekeeper’s Apprentice, is a fantasy, magical adventure for middle grade readers.
Her second novel, Hope Cottage, is a dark and mysterious family saga penned as a cathartic means of coming to terms with the loss of her own mother.
Having traded the challenges and rewards of teaching for the hurdles and merits of writing, Catherine McCarthy now lives with her illustrator husband in a two hundred year old cottage in West Wales amidst spectacular, story-inspiring countryside.