Publisher's Synopsis
Merging psychological realism and rural terror, Hesket: A Norfolk Haunting is a compelling, uncanny page-turner from debut novelist Sara Bayat.
Unsettling things are happening in rural Norfolk. At first glance, Hesket is a blink-and-you-miss it village, a seemingly unremarkable place with very ordinary people living unremarkable lives just like you and me. Yet, they live in a tucked away place with a dark history. There are centuries-old tales of witch trials and death, of bones shoring up a landscape where the women condemned as witches are buried, and a great flood that long ago washed Old Hesket away.
Through an interconnected series of subtly chilling stories in which the ordinary and the peculiar converge, Hesket: A Norfolk Haunting chronicles a quiet community of hard-working people, each contending with their own losses amidst daily life. To their horror, the sacred grounds of their beloved old woods are earmarked for development. As the work commences despite village protests, strange and unexplained events begin to occur and the lives of the villagers start to disintegrate. While each of the eight characters has their own story to tell, beautifully and heart-rendingly encapsulated within individual chapters, the narrative connects them in a broader tale of jealousy, love, bereavement and joy from beginning to end.
Amongst others, we meet grieving painter Daniel who is convinced that his beloved young daughter can be brought back to life; then elderly, lonely Nell worms her way into our hearts stealing her best friend's taxidermised kingfisher only for the dazzling bird to take on a life of its own. We fall head over heels for sweet young Finn, who only wants to hang out with his evasive brother, and later is the only one to see the terrible, centuries-old Hesket Hag fish...
