Ferney - Hardcover

A fabulous pastoral-romantic-suspense novel that HarperCollins are getting behind in a big way.

A couple are seeking to move from the city to the country. The wife, Gally, is an impetuous and instinctive person compared with her older historian husband, Mike. She finds a broken down old cottage in the Wiltshire village of Penselwood and falls in love with it. She is also drawn to a gnarled old local called Ferney, which rather annoys Mike, not least because every time that Mike begins to talk about the history of the area, Ferney puts him right as if he had been there himself... which, it turns out, he had. It transpires that Ferney is condemned to be reincarnated through the ages and occasionally, he is born at the right time to be in the company of the woman he loves, who is also on that same spiral through time. It’s not happening often enough, though, and last time they met, they agreed that they would both contrive to die together. Gradually, it becomes clear that Gally is the woman, and Ferney must ask her to keep her promise. Gally, though, is pregnant now, and the powerful pull of her past-love for Ferney must battle against her present love for Mike, and all her maternal instincts.

Through the earlier lives of Gally and Ferney, James Long explores the changing landscape and social history of England – from Saxon times to the present day – and weaves together a story of dreadful suspense and regenerative love. This is a rich and magical novel that will appeal to readers of bestsellers as diverse as Sarum, Midnight is a Lonely Place and The Magic Cottage.

Mike and Gally are a complementary couple. He, the teacher, is older, more sober and rational. She, the student, is impulsive, vivacious and intuitive. They are searching for a house in the country when one of Gally’s intuitions brings them to a village in Somerset and a broken-down old cottage. For Mike, this looks like a financial nightmare, for Gally it is a potential dream home – and she gets her way.

Soon, however, their loving relationship comes under strain as Gally begins to form an increasingly close attachment to Ferney, a gnarled old countryman who seems to know everything about the house and its past, not to mention the history of the surrounding countryside.

What is it that draws these two people together? Reluctantly at first, then with more urgency as he feels his own life slipping away and Gally knows that new life is quickening in her, Ferney forces her to understand their connection: a bond that has existed between them down the centuries and the generations.

A beautiful evocation of pastoral history and a compulsively gripping narrative make 'Ferney' a superbly enjoyable and utterly original novel.

James Long is the author of four acclaimed thrillers, the most recent of which is 'Sixth Column'. A former BBC correspondent, he lives with his wife and three children in Devon.