Description

A spellbinding novel that places one familys tragedies against the uncontainable life force of the land itself

Near a village high in the Pyrenees Domnec wanders across a ridge fancying himself more a poet than a farmer to reel off his verses over on this side of the mountain He gathers black chanterelles and attends to a troubled cow And then storm clouds swell full of electrifying power Reckless gleeful they release their bolts of lightning one of which strikes Domnec He dies The ghosts of seventeenthcentury witches gather around him taking up the chanterelles hed harvested before going on their merry ways So begins this novel that is as much about the mountains and the mushrooms as it is about the human dramas that unfold in their midst