Even now, I’d still describe myself as a reader first, a writer second. A love of reading led to a love of writing – it seemed the closest thing to living inside a story. I wasn’t always included in playground games, but that didn’t matter when I had my favourite characters waiting for me on the page. A shy child, I spent most lunchtimes reading. For her, books are not just an escape they’re a life raft. Kate in particular finds solace in the written word: she inherits Violet’s library – including works by Sylvia Plath, Angela Carter and Virginia Woolf, some of my own literary heroes – and is inspired to work in a bookshop. For Violet and Kate, the act of reading – of connecting with a woman who lived centuries before – is life changing. Her descendants, Violet in 1942 and Kate in 2019, both find and read Altha’s story. At the heart of the novel is a manuscript written by Altha Weyward, on trial for witchcraft in 1619. For me, the answer is by connecting with the women around us, and those who came before us.
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