Suffolk, 1937. As the English countryside swelters in a historic heat wave, preparations for a party at Snare House are in full swing. The Winthers' only daughter, Joanie, is returning from a summer in Europe, a flying visit before she leaves for university in Oxford. Only Margaret, long-time ward of the family and Joanie's closest friend, knows the truth: Joanie won't be going to Oxford. Instead, the two will be leaving the stultifying society they know to live together in London, as lovers.
Then the pair is discovered, and everything goes wrong. Banished to a cabin in the nearby woods, Margaret is alone with her estranged father. As summer curdles into fall and magpies throng the forest, Margaret begins to lose herself. Her dreams turn dark and terrifying, and she wakes from them with dirt on her soles and scratches on her back. Everything suggests that a perverse power is awakening within her-perhaps the very one which led to her mother's ostracism and eventual death. If she can harness it, Margaret may be able to secure an approximation of the love she's always craved-but at what cost?
Little Wild is at once a feminist fairy tale, a haunting meditation on the dangers of desire, and a gripping debut from a talented new voice. Weyward meets Atonement in a shimmering debut novel of first love, betrayal, and revenge set on a crumbling British estate Laura Evans was born in the north of England and grew up in the Midlands. She studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge before coming in a roundabout way to journalism, where she became a magazine editor specializing in travel and nature. A lifelong city dweller who romanticizes the countryside (but knows it would eat her alive), she spent several years in both London and Bristol before making her way to the medieval city of Norwich, where she lives with her husband, children, and Maggie, the world's friendliest cockapoo.
