Overview

North Wales, 1945. Twelve-year-old Jackie is an evacuee, Iolo, her host, is touched by Gwyn ap Nudd, the Welsh god of the chase, and from him Jackie learns hunting's ancient secret lore. She knows every hound in his pack, every stream and covert in their valley, and by sleeping in their kennels, understands their dreams. By the war's end she sees herself as more hound than girl. When her mother comes to reclaim her, Jackie is transplanted to a derelict estate in Westmorland. Its owner, Major Wetheral, is the local Master of Foxhouds. But his English way of hunting flouts the Welsh god's lore, courting disaster for him and the Wetheral line. His troubled fourteen-year-old, Oliver, is fiercely opposed to blood sports, and as the bond between Jackie and Oliver deepens the hunt presents new and frightening challenges for them both. Can Jackie, through her knowledge of the god, avert the doom that haunts the Wetherals? Or will she be trapped in the fate of an English house and its master?

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Reviews

'Truly one of the most compelling novels I've read in years, In the Blood gripped me from the start and refused to let go. Jenny Newman's evocation of time and place is sublime, as she conjures the aftermath of the second world war in the scraggy coat-tails or rural north Wales and Cumbria. Through the watchful eyes of our young narrator, Jackie, we see, smell and feel the exhausted countryside slowly return to life. but nothing can be as it was. Mix in mythology, sharp social history, exquisite nature writing and pinpoint characterisation, and you have a wonderful story that never misses a beat' Mike Parker 'In the Blood is a growing up, coming-of-age tale set just after the war in a derelict Westmorland country mansion, and the main theme is the hunt. This is fiction that doesn't pull its punches. I found this novel utterly gripping and absorbing, very sharp on class and the historical period. But above all it's a terrific, bewitching read.' Patricia Dunker 'I read In the Blood in a compulsive rush. Its evocation of a distorted, obsessive country childhood, of a last gasp of fox hunting feudalism and its passionate Welshness make it quite unlike anything else on offer. Think of a collaboration between Dodie Smith and Alan Garner filmed by Powell and Pressburger and you're very close to its vivid mysteries. Highly recommended.' Patrick Gale 'A tender exploration of class and childhood that exhilaratingly celebrates myth and imagination as spurs to change.' Michele Rogers

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