The Familiars: A Novel

by Stacey Halls

Overview

From the Author of the Sunday Times Bestseller, Mrs. England!

In 1612 Lancaster, England, the hunt for witches has reached a fever pitch…

But in a time of suspicion and accusation, to be a woman may be the greatest risk of all.

Fleetwood Shuttleworth, the mistress of Pendle Hill’s Gawthorpe Hall, is with child. Anxious to produce an heir, she is distraught to find a letter from her physician that warns her husband she will not survive this pregnancy.

Devastated, Fleetwood wanders the estate grounds, where she catches a young woman poaching. Alice Gray claims she is a local midwife and promises to help Fleetwood deliver a healthy baby. But a witch-obsessed frenzy sweeps the countryside. Even woodland creatures or “familiars” are thought to be dark companions of the unholy. And Alice soon stands accused of witchcraft.

Time is running out. The witch trials are about to begin. With both their lives at stake, Fleetwood must prove Alice’s innocence. Only they know the truth.

Set against the real Pendle witch trials, this compelling novel draws its characters from historical figures as it explores the lives of seventeenth-century women. Ultimately it raises the question: Was witch hunting really just women hunting?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780778309017
Publisher:	MIRA Books
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	431,703
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Stacey Halls was born in 1989 and grew up in Lancashire, England. She studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire and has worked as a journalist since the age of 21, writing for publications including The Independent, Fabulous magazine, Stylist and Psychologies. She lives in London with her husband. The Familiars is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

"The new Hilary Mantel!"—Cosmopolitan

"An intricate and sensitive portrayal of a brave, tenacious young girl carving her place in the world. A must-read novel."-Heather Morris, bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz

"Assured and alluring, this beautiful tale of women, witchcraft and the fight against power is a delight."-Jessie Burton, NYT bestselling author of The Miniaturist

"A rich and atmospheric reimagining of a historical period rife with religious tensions, superstitions, misogyny and fear....Now with so many high profile men claiming to be victims of a witch hunt, it's good to understand what a real one feels like." New York Times Book Review

"Rich with intrigue and filled with details of the constraints faced by seventeenth-century women, both well born and common, The Familiars offers a look into the real-life world of the notorious Pendle witch trials that ended with 11 executions."-Booklist

"The lives of two young women intersect in a novel that imagines the story behind a famous 17th-century witch trial ... [when] acting in socially inappropriate ways could get one condemned to hanging."-Kirkus Reviews

"Spellbinding...it will suck you right into the prose and hold you there, like a witch with a powerful charm." —All About Romance

"Set against the furor leading up to the Pendle Witch Trials, Halls's winning novel is a quietly powerful and richly evocative tale."— Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

12/03/2018
Halls’s enthralling debut opens in 1612, when lonely Fleetwood Shuttleworth, mistress of Gawthorpe Hall in England, is only 17 and pregnant for the fourth time, and, because of a letter her husband received from a physician, she has good reason to believe that she and her baby will not survive. Her failure to give her husband Richard an heir weighs on her, and with him frequently away, she relies on her loyal French mastiff Puck for companionship. Then she meets quiet, strange midwife Alice Gray, who ensures Fleetwood she can help her deliver a healthy, living child. Soon, Alice is arrested for murder and swept up in a vicious witch hunt. Devastated by Alice’s imprisonment and reeling from the discovery that Richard is keeping a pregnant mistress in her supposedly abandoned childhood home, Fleetwood sets out to save the life of the only woman who can save hers—and the only true friend she’s ever had. Fleetwood, who narrates, paints a portrait of her life and friendship with Alice that is often imbued with a sense of the otherworldly, depicting a pivotal bond they forged in a time when women had little agency over their lives, their bodies, or their fates. Set against the furor leading up to the Pendle witch trials, Halls’s winning novel is a quietly powerful and richly evocative tale. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

2018-12-09

The lives of two young women intersect in a novel that imagines the story behind a famous 17th-century witch trial in northern England.

The narrator of journalist Halls' dramatic first novel is 17-year-old Fleetwood Shuttleworth, married at 13 to Richard Shuttleworth, lord of Gawthorpe Hall. She's pregnant for the fourth time, though each of her earlier pregnancies has resulted in a miscarriage. Desperate to produce an heir so she won't be cast aside for a more fertile wife or mistress, and even more frantic to survive the childbirth she suspects may cause her death, she seeks out the help of local midwife Alice Gray. The two have become friends, and Fleetwood's pregnancy is proceeding smoothly, when Alice is accused, along with a dozen of her friends and neighbors, of witchcraft and jailed in a dungeon by a local magistrate. Fleetwood, traveling around the countryside accompanied only by her mastiff, Puck—to her husband's chagrin—must try to find a way to free Alice before she is condemned to death. The characters, places, and some of the major events in Halls' well-researched novel are historically accurate, though the author adds some fictional embroidery: There's no evidence that Fleetwood and Alice met, let alone formed an alliance. For better or worse, this is essentially the story of aristocratic Fleetwood rather than commoner Alice, who remains a shadowy figure. Fleetwood is a plucky and determined, if not particularly complex, character. Halls, whose plot sometimes relies too heavily on information concealed for the sake of narrative convenience, adds a few hints of magic to the plot, though she resists using it to get her characters out of trouble. Her main strength lies in her depiction of the difficulties of life for women in this time and place, where pregnancy and childbirth posed a real threat to life and acting in socially inappropriate ways could get one condemned to hanging.

A solid if not entirely credible historical novel.

Kirkus Reviews