The Meeting Place

Today I saw the strange woman again. For I am sure this poor ghost is, in fact, a woman. It is true she is dressed as a man, though no man I ever saw dressed in quite this fashion . . . When Clarice Mitchell arrives at an isolated farmhouse to rehearse a production of Pericles, she leaves the well-charted country behind. Entering a world as mysterious as the unregulated, unpredictable moorland, she finds herself in odd company and on the verge of strange discoveries. Who is the middle-aged woman in Victorian costume who watches her. And the wild-haired girl first glimpsed standing in a moorland pool and later on a journey? Why does the shadow of a priory long since gone still fall across the farm where Clarice is staying, and where once her old headmistress used to stay? As the stories of these unusual women interweave across the centuries - disturbing stories of violence and witchcraft, passion and prejudice, during the Wars of the Roses, in stifling Victorian England and in the present day - one woman has to come to terms with the impossible choices of the past. Crafted with all Mary Hocking's characteristic subtlety and skill, The Meeting Place is a spellbinding, moving novel.