The Butterfly Beats its Wings

At a family reunion in a remote woodland cottage, a mother and daughter must face their ghosts and unravel the dark secret in their Filipino heritage.

* * * *

A family gathering summons Nina Hawkins to Wildwood, the crumbling cottage where she grew up in the primeval Forest of Dean. From the moment she arrives she’s surrounded by the ghosts of her troubled adolescence, from her struggles to fit in as a mixed-race child to the tragic death of her best friend, Ellie. Nina’s free-spirited mother, Grace, can’t understand Nina’s obsession with the past. Having left her home country of the Philippines behind, newly-divorced Grace wants to live life to the full.

But memory runs deep as tree roots, and as the week progresses, apparitions appear in the shadows of the forest and forgotten friends resurface. Nina starts to think that someone doesn’t want her to forget Ellie’s death: someone who knows the secret reason for Nina’s guilt. The more Nina investigates, the more she becomes certain that Grace, too, is hiding something. But the truth is more shocking than she can imagine, tangled in her heritage that leads back to the witch doctors and Christian missionaries of the Philippines.

* * * *

Praise for The Butterfly Beats its Wings

‘A beautifully haunting, deeply evocative story about identity, memory, and the ghosts we carry’ Freya Sampson

‘Atmospheric, creepy, heartbreaking and healing. You will not want to put it down’ Natalie Gregory

‘An immersive novel that explores how history is always never that far behind us.’ Mahsuda Snaith