Dark Earth

OUT IN HARDBACK IN THE UK AND IN THE US

A few pieces about the making of the book and the research behind it:

Beginnings | Mysterious Black Soil | The Brooch | Recycling and Looting in Londinium | Further Reading

500AD. A mud island in the Thames. Two sisters are waiting for their father, the Great Smith, to finish his work in the forge. But something's coming...

Isla has a secret: she has learned her father’s sophisticated sword-making skills at a time when even entering a forge is forbidden to women.

Her sister Blue has a secret, too: at low tide on the night each new moon, she visits the mud woman, whose bones were shackled to their island by the elders of her tribe to make a lesson of a woman who wouldn’t hold her tongue.

When the elders discover Isla’s secrets, there’s nowhere for the sisters to hide except to flee their island for the ghostly walls of Londinium. Here they find a community of squatters, emigrants, travellers and looters, all led by the mysterious Crowther. But trouble pursues them even into the haunted city.

Dark Earth takes us back to the very founding of Britain, and explores what it means to find kin in a world ruled by blood ties, blood feuds and men in quest of a nation.

ENDORSEMENTS:

‘Rebecca Stott has written an eloquent and heart-achingly poignant story of sisterhood that echoes across the centuries. Evocative and richly mythic, Dark Earth pays homage to the quiet triumph of women working together to build a better world. A truly beautiful book.’ –Lucy Holland, author of Sistersong

‘At the heart of Rebecca Stott's Dark Earth are those things as old as Time itself: the love between two sisters, the bonds that bring women together, the power of telling a story over a fire. Though Stott turns her expert eye back thousands of years, this novel pulses with the energy of a brave new world, a world as beautiful as it is dangerous, where a belief in myth and magic can save your life.’—Katherine J. Chen, author of Joan: A Novel of Joan of Arc.

‘Magical and evocative’, - Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock.

‘An ancient tapestry of legend brilliantly rewoven,’ - Francis Spufford, author of Golden Hill and Light Perpetual.

‘Skilfully imagines a past world in which women must use everything they have – kinship, secrets, spells and above all the power of stories – to survive the blood feuds and land grabs of national-building tyrants’ - Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory

FIRST REVIEWS:
‘Superb … This is a book that seeks to do for British myth what Natalie Haynes and Madeline Miller have done so brilliantly for classical literature: uncovering stories of feminine power that have been occluded by the male hand of history’ - Observer

‘Gripping … puts a female perspective right at the centre of a time period usually dominated by men’s stories’ - Independent

‘Female defiance blazes through as Stott’s women reclaim this brutal period…this novel will make you appreciative of the revelatory historical treasures beneath our feet’ - Telegraph