Three generations of Weyward women, about a hundred years apart, and each with a peculiar gift of working with potions and spells, and having a close connection with birds and insects. Sort of a slightly more sinister Cinderella. The birdies aren’t the cute ones, and there is a distinct lack of adorable little mammals. The potions are mostly for women’s health issues, abortion in particular. Lord knows their customers are in desperate need of some help.
Of course this leads to them finding themselves frequently in dodgy situations. Altha (1619) narrowly escapes being burned as a witch. Violet (1942) is trapped by her widowed father on their decaying family estate, denied any formal education and morally supported only by her brother. And then there is Kate, 2019, escaping an abusive marriage in London with a very wealthy man, hiding herself (and the fact that she is pregnant) in her great-aunt Violet’s rundown cottage, a recent inheritance from a relative whom she never knew. All three women are trapped in situations that seem grim, but use their knowledge and their uncanny connection with the natural world to eventually make fulfilling lives for themselves.
You certainly don’t want to get on their bad side though, as Frederick, Violet’s intended and assailant, finds out. He is given her family estate after she is banished to the cottage, but there seems to be some difficulties with the upkeep. He ends up living a pitiful existence in one heavily guarded room, since the rest of the estate has become uninhabitable. How? In the garden of a winter, by the beck on a moonlit night, Violet notices under the ice,
. . . thousands of tiny, glowing spheres clung to twigs and pebbles. Mayfly eggs.. . .In the summer, it would begin. She pictured the Hall, her father’s things – his precious furniture, scarred and black with rot, the globe on his desk eaten away. The air shimmering with insects, in a swarm that grew and grew each year, until there was no escaping it. And Frederick. Trapped there alone.
It does not end well for him. Not to worry, he totally deserved it.