The Good People

Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize 2017 Pulling his coat over the both of them, she closed her eyes and her lungs emptied of air. Pain descended with the weight of water and she felt that she was drowning. Her chest shuddered, and she was crying into her husband’s collarbone, into his clothes reeking of the earth and cow shit and the soft sweet smell of the valley air and all the turf smoke it carried on an autumn evening. She cried like a pining dog, with the strained, strung whimper of abandonment. Sometimes all that protects us from our fear of what is unknown is our belief in that which is unproven. County Kerry, Ireland, 1825. Nora, bereft after the sudden death of her beloved husband and daughter, finds herself alone and caring for her young grandson Micheal. Micheal cannot speak and cannot walk and Nora is desperate to know what is wrong with him. What happened to the healthy, happy grandson she met when her daughter was still alive? Mary arrives in the valley to help Nora just as the whispers are spreading: the stories of unexplained misfortunes, of illnesses, and the rumours that Micheal is a changeling child who is bringing bad luck to the valley. Nance's knowledge keeps her apart. To the new priest, she is a threat, but to the valley people she is a wanderer, a healer and the only person who knows how to keep the malevolent influences of the good people at bay. Nance knows how to use the plants and berries of the woodland; she understands the magic in the old ways and she might be able to help Micheal. As these three women are drawn together in the hope of restoring Micheal, their world of folklore and belief, of ritual and stories, tightens around them. It will lead them down a dangerous path, and force them to question everything they have ever known. Based on true events and set in a lost world bound by its own laws, The Good People is Hannah Kent's startling new novel about absolute belief and devoted love. Terrifying, thrilling and moving in equal measure, this long-awaited follow-up the Waterstones’ championed debut Burial Rites shows an author at the height of her powers, living up to a reputation for creating dark, immersive and subtly affecting fictional worlds. ‘Kent has a terrific feel for the language of her setting… This is a serious and compelling novel about how those in desperate circumstances cling to ritual as a bulwark against their own powerlessness.’ – Graeme Macrae Burnet (author of His Bloody Project),The Guardian