Synopsis:
On a frozen winter’s day Mary Bicknor, the companion of a wealthy old woman, is married to groom Easter Probert, whose child she is expecting. She cries bitterly throughout the service, which has been engineered by the vicar. Easter has no wedding ring for her, he lends her a silver ring of his own and then snatches it back, taking a bus and leaving her to walk home alone, cursing her traitorous flesh. The vicar tries to tell himself he has done the right thing, so starts Mary’s life of misery and horror with the brutish Probert.

About the author:
Margiad Evans was born Peggy Whistler in Uxbridge in 1909, but it was the Border Country around Ross-on-Wye which became central to her consciousness and her writing. She took the name Margiad Evans to reflect this sense of identity. Her first novel, Country Dance, was published in 1932, and is known as ‘The Welsh Wuthering Heights’. She also produced poetry and art, as well as two memoirs, including an account of her experiences of epilepsy. She died of a brain tumour in 1958.

Short extract:

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A gothic tale of passion, violence, cruelty and unexpected tenderness.

In this her third novel, Margiad Evans conjures a tempestuous and sometimes sinister world of rural and small town border life in early twentieth century.