The Ninth Child
By Sally Magnusson £16.99 TWO ROADS BOOKS
In mid-19th century Glasgow, when cholera was rife, the city fathers decided they needed a new water supply. And so engineers were sent off to Loch Katrine. Explosions followed and something under the earth stirred. Then a stranger appeared, a tall, thin cadaverous man calling himself Robert Kirke, a minister with no church and no home, only memories of a lost love and a fierce determination to be reunited with her.
Another face fresh to the area is Isabel Aird, wife of Dr Alexander Aird, who has come from Glasgow to serve the shanty town of workers that has sprung up around Loch Katrine. Like Robert Kirke, Isabel is a lost soul, mourning the children she has lost to stillbirth and miscarriages. She and Robert form an unlikely friendship, much to the disquiet of the Airds’ maid, Kirsty.
The loss of her eighth child sends Isabel into a fresh spiral of despair. As she roams the banks of Loch Chon she imagines she hears her lost children laughing and playing in the breeze.
Meanwhile, in another corner of Scotland, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and their nine children enjoy the quiet of Balmoral, debating the wonders of the works on Loch Katrine and Florence Nightingale’s views on health and hygiene. Then Robert Kirke appears. Will he find what he is looking for to appease his fairy masters?
As events escalate and the players are brought together on the shores of Loch Katrine, tragedy unfolds – but who will be the winners and losers?
Inspired by the fairy tree on Aberfoyle’s Doon Hill, and loosely based on the legend of Robert Kirke, retold by Sir Walter Scott, this enthralling story combines the harsh reality of poverty and disease with fantasy and legend in Victorian Scotland.
Told from the points of view of Isabel, Kirsty and Victoria, we enter the world of three very different women of different social classes, each strong yet vulnerable in her own way and each willing to make sacrifices for the things they love.
Karen Byrom
“Who will be the winners losers?” and