East Anglia, 1645. Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer and servant, has lived peacefully for more than four decades in her beloved coastal village of Cleftwater. Voiceless since childhood, Martha has not spoken a word in years. 
 

One autumn morning, a sinister newcomer appears.
The witchfinder, Silas Makepeace, has been blazing a trail of destruction along the coast, and his arrival in Cleftwater strikes fear into the heart of the community. Within a day local women are being arrested, and Martha finds herself  co-opted into the hunt. Now she is caught between suspicion and betrayal, between shielding herself or condemning the women of the village. In desperation, she revives a wax witching doll inherited from her mother, in the hope it will bring protection. But the doll’s true effects are unknowable, Martha is powerless to protest, and the witch-hunts spiralling destructiveness threatens to destroy the people and the life Martha knows and loves.

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'Conjures a seventeenth-century witch hunt, with echoes of our own day ... at once poetic and sharp.'
New York Times Book Review