Black Wood Women
‘Visceral, twisting, propulsive – Black Wood Women begs to be devoured’ Stacey Halls
'Grim and glorious' Daily Mail
'Will leave you breathless’ Sunday Post
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The last wolf in England hunts for prey. Exhausted, hungry and alone, she fears for the litter of pups she carries, and the men who seek to wipe her out.
Yorkshire, 1649.
Since they fled Ireland, Caragh and her family have hidden their true identities to enable them to start a new life in England. But when Caragh finds her parents brutally murdered by a Protestant determined to rid the area of Catholics, she must flee again.
Travelling east, she comes to a forest, where she meets a coven of women who wear their hair loose and refuse to follow men’s rules.
Having found acceptance at last, Caragh is unaware that a different kind of persecution stalks the black wood women, and their days in the forest are numbered.
Michael Stewart is the author of three other novels: King Crow (winner of the Guardian’s Not-the-Booker Award), Café Assassin and Ill Will: The Untold Story of Heathcliff; two short story collections: Mr Jolly and Four Letter Words; two poetry collections: Couples and The Dogs; and a hybrid memoir: Walking the Invisible: Following in the Brontës’ Footsteps.
He is also the creator of the Brontë Stones project, four monumental stones situated in the landscape between the Brontë sisters’ birthplace and the parsonage where they lived, inscribed with poems by Kate Bush, Carol Ann Duffy, Jeannette Winterson and Jackie Kay.
He has written for TV, radio and stage, and is the winner of the BBC Alfred Bradley Bursary Award and the BBC Short Range film competition. His BBC Radio 4 drama Excluded was shortlisted for the Imison Award. He was head of Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield for eighteen years.