Isabel doesn’t speak to people, but she speaks to animals all the time. She knows what forces are at work on the Northumberland moors but she doesn’t understand them. And what can she do? She’s only seven.

Alison Rigg, rising star of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is in Northumberland to investigate reports of BSE where no BSE should be. Now her body has been found lying by a stream. She is still alive but her soul has fled, no one knows where.

And a dark force that no one dares name is on the move, reaching into the lives of this small community and tearing it apart.

Gus Smith’s dark fantasy mixes the look and feel, the light and air of the Northumberland moors with a force of evil that hits you like a slap in the face. He tells his story with the rhythm and plausibility of a folk tale.