Isobel Gowdie

Alas that I should compare him to a man.

Scotland in 1662 is gripped by a wave of witch trials and executions. Concerned about the validity of confessions obtained through torture and pricking, Advocate Depute George Mackenzie and Royal Commissioner Middleton dispatch a Public Notary, Archibald Kellas, to investigate the extraordinary confessions of two Auldearn women, Isobel Gowdie and Janet Breadheid. Archie Kellas has been to Auldearn before as a soldier in bitter civil war. To conduct his inquiries Kellas must penetrate both the fantastical world depicted in Isobel's words and the hostility of the Nairnshire Lairds and Ministers, who hold strong to the Reformed Kirk and Covenant.
Isobel Gowdie was a real woman, living within the subsistence fermtouns of rural Scotland. The men who arrested her were pious men, well-educated for their age. Alternating chapters of Isobel's first-hand experience with Kellas's historical detective investigation, the reader will come closer in this novel than ever before, to understanding the meaning of the unique and mesmerising confessions of Isobel Gowdie.