Of His Bones

A haunting Yorkshire-coast novel of adoption, motherhood and the ties that outlast death, for readers who love emotional depth and a vivid sense of place.

"Gabe and I are happy this way. We don't need anyone else in our lives."

Mariana feels like a pawn in other people's games. Her birth mother is ill and opportunities for them to be reconciled are running out.

Despite being adopted, Mariana has always felt secure with who she is. But both sides of her birth family are now closing in, and whatever she decides will irrevocably alter many lives; most of all the man and woman who created her.

Of His Bones is about predestination and choices. It explores themes of familial love, identity and the powerful hold of the past. Set in the seascapes of East and North Yorkshire, this novel is the sister-book to The Last Time We Saw Marion.

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Tracey Scott-Townsend is a poet and visual artist as well as a novelist, and it shows: the North Sea's tides and shorelines carries the book's grief and longing. Beneath the family drama runs a quiet strand of the uncanny, the possibility that love (and souls) return. For readers of Maggie O'Farrell, Kate Atkinson and fans of Sharon Guskin's The Forgetting Time who are drawn to fiction where blood, choice and destiny pull against each other.

"Of His Bones surpassed my very high expectations. It's a glorious, melodic, haunting and beautiful book... the page-turning plot had me steaming ahead." - Louise Beech, author of The Lion Tamer Who Lost

"The way the author described the scenery... was so crisp and vivid, that I felt I could envision every scene... every wave crashing against the shore." - JL Dixon, author and reviewer

Please note: this novel contains depictions of an eating disorder and self-harm.

Tracey Scott-Townsend is the author of uncompromising family dramas which delve into often uncomfortable aspects of relationships of all kinds, but motherhood is frequently at the heart of her stories. Sense of place is also important. Three of her books, including her first novel The Last Time We Saw Marion, feature the Humber Estuary in East Yorkshire, where she lived for a year when she was young.Tracey writes in her shed in the garden, warmed by the wood stove. She and her husband frequently take to the road with their dog, Riley, in a van which also has a wood stove. They go to wild places, and Tracey's favourite is the Outer Hebrides.Tracey is the mother of four grown children, and is the current Writer in Residence for Welcome House in Hull, a Centre for Asylum Seekers and Refugees.