Kate Worsley
Foxash

** This event is sold out **

Kate Worsley talks about her latest book Foxash; a visceral, visual novel of rural experiment and dark secrets, set in 1930s England at the height of the Great Depression.

With an unsettling sense of place, it is a deeply original story of quiet and powerful menace, of the real hardships of rural life, and the myths and folklore that seep into ordinary lives – with surprising consequences.

Manningtree Library, High Street, Manningtree, CO11 1AD
Tickets: £8 / £7
Box Office: Online or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

About the book – Foxash

A visceral, visual novel of rural experiment and dark secrets, set in 1930s England at the height of the Great Depression.

Worn out by poverty, Lettie Radley and her miner husband Tommy grasp at the offer of their very own smallholding – part of a Government scheme to put the unemployed back to work on the land.

When she comes down to Essex to join him, it’s not Tommy who greets her, but their new neighbours. Overbearing and unkempt, Jean and Adam Dell are everything that the smart, spirited, aspirational Lettie can’t abide.

As Lettie settles in, she finds an unexpected joy in the rhythms of life on the smallholding. She’s hopeful that her past, and the terrible secret Tommy has come to Foxash to escape, are far behind them.

But the Dells have their own secrets. And as the seasons change, and a man comes knocking at the gate, the scene is set for a terrible reckoning.

Combining a gothic sensibility with a visceral, unsettling sense of place, Foxash is a deeply original novel of quiet and powerful menace, of the real hardships of rural life, and the myths and folklore that seep into ordinary lives – with surprising consequences.

‘A wonderfully atmospheric and deeply unsettling novel, full of images so vivid they seem to leap off the page. Worsley’s fiction is something to savour.’ – Sarah Waters

‘Exquisitely written and deeply original, with secrets that are tightly layered, always surprising and teased out with impressive control.’ – Bethan Roberts

About the author

Kate Worsley’s first novel, She Rises, won the HWA Debut Crown for Historical Fiction and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Prize in the US. She was born in Preston, Lancashire and now lives on the Essex coast.

Follow Kate on Instagram @worsleywrite

Photo of Kate Worsley © Rick Pushinsky