The Butcher's Daughter

Shortlisted for the WINSTON GRAHAM HISTORICAL FICTION PRIZE 2018

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR

The Butcher s Daughter is the richly atmospheric story of a young woman s struggle to define herself in a world of uncertainty, intrigue and danger during a period of great upheaval: the Tudor era.

It is 1535 and Agnes Peppin, daughter of a West Country butcher, leaves her family home in disgrace. Banished and forced to abandon her new-born infant, she appears destined to live out her days cloistered behind the walls of the Shaftesbury Abbey. But as Agnes grapples with the complex rules and hierarchies of her new life, King Henry VIII has proclaimed himself the new head of the Church. Religious houses are being formally suppressed and the great Abbey is no exception to the purge.

Agnes journey from the Abbey leads her into strange territory, where her experiences of sexual passion, delusion, shattering grief and grotesque violence come together in an England ruled by the whims of ambitious men and strained by bloody revolts. Free at last to be the master of her own fate, Agnes descends into a world she knows little about, using her wits and testing her moral convictions against her need to survive - by any means necessary...