The Witching Tide

"Stylish and raw...seizes the reader's sympathy and does not let go." --Anne Enright, Booker Prize-winning author of The Gathering

For readers of Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel, an immersive literary debut inspired by historical events--a deadly witch hunt in 17th-century England--that claimed many innocent lives.

East Anglia, 1645. Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer, and servant, has lived peacefully for more than four decades in her beloved seaside village of Cleftwater. Having lost her voice as a child, Martha has not spoken a word in years.

One autumn morning, a sinister newcomer appears in town. The witchfinder, Silas Makepeace, has been blazing a trail of destruction along the coast, and now has Cleftwater in his sights. His arrival strikes fear into the heart of the community. Within a day, local women are being captured and detained, and Martha finds herself a silent witness to the hunt.

Powerless to protest, Martha is enlisted to search the accused women for "devil's marks." She is caught between suspicion and betrayal; between shielding herself or condemning the women of the village. In desperation, she revives a wax witching doll that belonged to her mother, in the hope that it will bring protection. But the doll's true powers are unknowable, Martha harbors a terrible secret, and the gallows are looming...

Set over the course of just a few weeks that will forever change history, The Witching Tide delivers powerful and psychologically astute insights about the exigencies of friendship and the nature of loyalty, and heralds the arrival of a striking new voice in fiction.

Author: Margaret Meyer
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 09/05/2023
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.43h x 5.51w x 1.18d
ISBN: 9781668011362


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/01/2023 pg. 6
Publishers Weekly 07/03/2023
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2023

About the Author
Margaret Meyer has an MA in fiction from the University of East Anglia, and her writing has appeared in Words & Women, Landfall, Reflex Fiction, Southern Skies, and Triarchy Press. Meyer was born in Canada and grew up in New Zealand where she worked as a journalist and a fiction editor. After moving to the UK she was the Museum of London's Publishing Director before becoming Director of Literature with the British Council. Now a practicing therapist, she has had clinical essays published in academic journals. She lives in Norwich, England. The Witching Tide, her first novel, was inspired by the events of the 1645-7 East Anglian witch hunt and is dedicated to the more than 100 innocent women who lost their lives.