The Good People by Hannah Kent

Sometimes all that protects us from our fear of what is unknown is our belief in that which is unproven.

County Kerry, Ireland, 1825.

Nora, bereft after the sudden death of her beloved husband and daughter, finds herself alone and caring for her young grandson Micheal. Micheal cannot speak and cannot walk and Nora is desperate to know what is wrong with him. What happened to the healthy, happy grandson she met when her daughter was still alive?

Mary arrives in the valley to help Nora just as the whispers are spreading: the stories of unexplained misfortunes, of illnesses, and the rumours that Micheal is a changeling child who is bringing bad luck to the valley.

Nance's knowledge keeps her apart. To the new priest, she is a threat, but to the valley people she is a wanderer, a healer and the only person who knows how to keep the malevolent influences of the good people at bay. Nance knows how to use the plants and berries of the woodland; she understands the magic in the old ways and she might be able to help Micheal.

As these three women are drawn together in the hope of restoring Micheal, their world of folklore and belief, of ritual and stories, tightens around them. It will lead them down a dangerous path, and force them to question everything they have ever known.

An imaginative tour-de-force that recreates a way of perceiving the world with extraordinary vividness . . . With its exquisite prose, this harrowing, haunting narrative of love and suffering is sure to be a prize-winner - Daily Mail

Kent has a terrific feel for the language of her setting. The prose is richly textured with evocative vocabulary . . . A serious and compelling novel about how those in desperate circumstances cling to ritual as a bulwark against their own powerlessness - Graeme Macrae Burnet, Guardian

Hannah Kent's second novel is a thorough study of the faiths and rituals of a rural community, as well as a poignant portrayal of grief - Financial Times

The Good People lies somewhere between Andrew Michael Hurley's gothic The Loney and Emma Donoghue's The Wonder . . . an absorbing and imaginative novel about superstition and the old ways - The Times