How did Danny die? On a summer's day in 1955, the drowned body of young Danny Masters is discovered by three of his teenage friends: Alexander, heir to the country estate that neighbours the village, and siblings Lennie and Tom, whose father is land agent to the Richmond family. Lennie is in love with volatile Alexander, but is he also in love or merely playing with her? Alexander's mother has been a widow for less than a year, yet her husband's brother seems always to be by her side. In the weeks that follow the tragic drowning, the river begins to give up its secrets. As the circumstances surrounding Danny's death emerge, relationships and bonds develop, and other stories gradually come to the surface, threatening to destroy an entire way of life.

Isolated from society, Emily Bronte and her siblings spend their days inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape to which she has become so passionately bound, she is simply unable to function. To the outside world, Emily Bronte appears taciturn and unexceptional, but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment. A violent phenomenon is about to burst forth that will fuse her imaginary world with the landscape of her beloved Yorkshire and change the literary world forever. Fifteen Wild Decembers is the dazzling second novel from a writer who has been compared to Shirley Hazzard and Graham Greene, and whose first novel was described as 'utterly stunning', 'mesmerizing' and hailed as 'a masterpiece.'

FIRST EUROPA TITLE BY MAJOR NEW BRITISH TALENT

A modern British classic in the making

Comparable to novels by Helen Dunmore, Sarah Dunant and Maggie O’Farrell

It is the summer of 1955. Alexander, Tom and his sister Lennie, discover the body of their childhood friend Danny Masters in the river that runs through Starome, a village on the Richmond estate in North Yorkshire. His death is a mystery. Did he jump, or was it just an accident?

Lady Venetia Richmond has no time to dwell on the death. Newly widowed, she is busy trying to keep the estate together, while struggling with death duties and crippling taxation. Alexander, her son and sole heir to Richmond Hall, is of little help. Just when she most needs him, he grows elusive, his behaviour becoming increasingly erratic. Lennie Fairweather, ‘child of nature’ and daughter of the late Sir Angus’s private secretary, has other things on her mind too. In love with Alexander, she longs to escape life with her over-protective father and domineering brother. Alexander is unpredictable though, hard to pin down. Can she be sure of his true feelings towards her?

In the weeks that follow the tragic drowning, the river begins to give up its secrets. As the truth about Danny’s death emerges, other stories come to the surface that threaten to destroy everyone’s plans for the future and, ultimately, their very way of life.

The River Within will surely take its place as a classic in a tradition of English fiction that takes in Thomas Hardy, Graham Swift and Helen Dunmore.