Corrag: A Novel - Hardcover

Fletcher, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393080005 ISBN 13: 9780393080001

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

A breathtaking novel of passion and betrayal in seventeenth-century Scotland, and the portrait of an unforgettable heroine accused of witchcraft.

February 13, 1692. Thirty-eight members of the MacDonald clan are killed by soldiers who had previously enjoyed the clan's hospitality. Many more die from exposure. Forty miles south, the captivating Corrag is imprisoned for her involvement in the massacre. Accused of witchcraft and murder, she awaits her death. Lonesome, she tells her story to Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist who seeks information to condemn the Protestant King William, rumored to be involved in the massacre. Hers is a story of passion, courage, love, and the magic of the natural world. By telling it, she transforms both their lives.

As in her award-winning debut novel, Eve Green, Susan Fletcher shows that she is "a novelist with the soul of a poet" (Booklist). This deeply philosophical and dramatic book is about an epic historic event and the difference a single heart can make―how deep and lasting relationships can come from the most unlikely places.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Fletcher is the author of Eve Green, which won the Whitbread Award for First Novel, Oystercatchers, and The Highland Witch. She lives in the United Kingdom.

From Publishers Weekly

The plight of an accused witch in late 17th-century Britain inspires confusion, then pity, in her only visitor in Fletcher's engrossing historical (after Oystercatchers). The only witness to the massacre of the MacDonald clan, Corrag sits in a village jail under a death sentence for her supposed supernatural involvement in the killings. Her interrogator is Charles Leslie, a Catholic loyalist traveling in disguise who is seeking information that may implicate the Protestant king William in the murders. Corrag leads Charles through her lonely childhood: her mother hanged for witchcraft, Corrag fled her hometown and lived hand to mouth before gaining the protection of the MacDonald clan. Corrag spins colorful if sometimes meandering tales of the unfriendly English countryside and the fleeting joy of having found, in the clan, a place where she can be accepted; Charles is harder to pin down, and he often functions as a placeholder until his abrupt shift into a pivotal role late in the book. Fletcher gives readers a strong plot, enough vivid passages to compensate for the occasional dull spot, and a triumphant heroine in Corrag, whose travails are truly epic. (Nov.) (c)
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393080005
• ISBN 13: 9780393080001
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368