Winner of the 2016 HWA Goldsboro Debut Crown Award.
'Fans of The Miniaturist will love flashing back to the dark bleakness of 1717 Lapland in Cecilia Ekback's debut.' Grazia
A brilliantly written and gripping historical Nordic Noir thriller with all the intrigue and atmosphere of Burial Rites, the pent-up passion of The Piano and the suspense of The Tenderness of Wolves.
There are six homesteads on Blackåsen Mountain.
A day's journey away lies the empty town. It comes to life just once, in winter, when the Church summons her people through the snows. Then, even the oldest enemies will gather.
But now it is summer, and new settlers are come.
It is their two young daughters who find the dead man, not half an hour's walk from their cottage.
The father is away. And whether stubborn, or stupid, or scared for her girls, the mother will not let it rest.
To the wife who is not concerned when her husband does not come home for three days; to the man who laughs when he hears his brother is dead; to the priest who doesn't care; she asks and asks her questions,
digging at the secrets of the mountain.
They say a wolf made those wounds. But what wild animal cuts a body so clean?
Swedish Lapland: 1717; a group of disparate settlers struggles to forge a new life in the shadow of the grim mountain Blackåsen whose dark mythology lies at odds with the repressive, almost feudal control exerted by the church. Into this setting, Maija, her husband and two daughters arrive, yearning to forget the traumas that caused them to abandon their native Finland and start anew.
Not long after their arrival, their teenage daughter Frederika stumbles across the savagely mutilated body of a fellow settler, Eriksson, in a picturesque glade. The locals are quick to dismiss the culprit as wolf or bear. Maija, however, is unconvinced and compelled by the ghosts of her past she determines to investigate a murder.
As the seasons change and a harsh winter known as a 'Wolf Winter' descends, Maija begins a dangerous quest to unearth the secrets that both her neighbours and the church have conspired to bury. Now as the snow begins to fall, she will come to know the full cost of survival demanded from those who would live in the shadow of Blackasen - and the terrible truth about those who have paid the price.
The main storyline itself was brilliant as the murder mystery unfolds through the eyes of both Frederika and her mother, Maija, down two very different routes. One of them embracing the "sorcery" of the old religion and trusting in something primal, the other looking at the cold facts.
