Verge – Exploring belief, loyalty and legacies beyond our control (Hardback)

Our summary description

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Verge opens with an omen that refuses to fade. On the day Rowena Murray is born, starlings fall dead from the sky, and death follows her into adolescence. Visions arrive uninvited. A boyfriend dies without warning. Her father soon after. By the time she is told the curse can be lifted, Rowena is already braced for loss.

The answer lies north, in Culcrith, where her grandmother waits with knowledge rooted in older beliefs. Rowena makes the journey with Halim, a farmhand whose careful reserve clashes with her anger and defiance. Their passage through rural Scotland is uneasy, shaped by landscapes that feel watchful and communities where tradition and prejudice sit side by side.

As tension builds between them, something more fragile begins to emerge. Trust, perhaps. Or the first outline of shared purpose. Verge is a novel alive to atmosphere and unease, where folklore presses against the present and inheritance feels inescapable. It asks what we owe to blood, belief, and the past, and whether escape is ever really possible once the world has marked you out.