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THE WILD HUNT by Emma Seckel

THE WILD HUNT

by Emma Seckel

Pub Date: Aug. 2nd, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-953534-22-4
Publisher: Tin House

Scottish islanders are haunted by repressed memories of sons recently lost in World War II, while a flock of birds grows ever more powerful.

When Leigh Welles gets the phone call that her father has been in a fatal accident, she returns to her Scottish island home from the mainland. Leigh’s homecoming coincides with the annual Oct. 1 return of the crows, who always fly in threes and whom the locals call sluagh—harbingers of death: “They come every October….They look like crows but they carry the dead’s souls.” On the night of a local ritual where town elders present offerings of earth to a bonfire, Hugo McClare grabs one of the sluagh and kills it, much to the horror of the onlookers. That same night, Hugo goes missing. Leigh and Iain MacTavish, a young widower and World War II fighter pilot, desperately search for Hugo long after everyone else has given up. All the while the pair are battling their own demons. Leigh is plagued by memories of her absentee mother and struggles with her tenuous relationship with her brother who lives on the mainland. Iain is drowning under the weight of the guilt of being one of the only local boys to come home from the war when so many did not, including Hugo’s older brother, Matthew. As the crows become increasingly threatening and destructive, Hugo’s enigmatic disappearance brings a host of new questions as well as tender moments of connection. Treading deftly into the worlds of folklore and magical realism, Seckel keenly captures a tone that echoes the eerie moor scenery of the island: hazy, haunting, and teeming with misgivings.

A foreboding mystery with surprising glimmers of hope.