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1990s, 2000s: A house in the woods holds deep dark secrets.
1990s, 2000s: A house in the woods holds deep dark secrets.
In Summer 1990, Caroline and Joanna are sent to stay with their great aunt, Dora, to spend their holidays in a sunlit village near the Forest of Dean. The countryside is a welcome change from the trauma they know back home in the city. But in the shadowy woods at the edge of the forest hide secrets that will bring their innocence to a distressing end …
Years later, a shocking act of violence sends Joanna back to Witchwood. In her great aunt’s lonely and dilapidating cottage, she will attempt to unearth the secrets of that terrifying summer. But in her quest to find answers, who can she trust?
Various locations in and around London here as this is where life starts in the present day. When Jo has to return home and go to her sister’s flat in Bayswater, the area seems strange and distant to her and it’s not a nice place to be for her given the circumtstances. The story unfurls in London but just to get an idea of life before and after the main event.
The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of Gloucestershire.
The area is some 110 square kilometres and is one of the only surviving ancient woodlands in England. A large area was reserved for royal hunting before 1066, and in this novel, there’s another kind of hunting and even hiding going deep in the forest. It’s deep inside the fictional Cinderglade Valley where the house in the novel is, in the village of Witchwood, again fictional. Given the name and the sense of a remote and dense forest, there are some dark secrets to be revealed here. Again, the locations are vague and fictional in most respects, but the fear of the forest is all too real.
Destination: London, Forest of Dean Author/guide: Rebecca Griffiths Departure: 1990s, 2000s
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