FernFolio

The daughter of a Yorkshire weaver, Meg Lumb has learned to wash and dye and spin wool, and help her mother with her younger brother, but from her father she has also learned to carve wood. She creeps away to the churchyard during quiet moments to play with Dilly-Lal and Drum-a-Drum, two peg dolls she has fashioned, undisturbed by the presence of the ghosts that haunt the graves there. In her pocket she also carries Bolly-Bolly, a strange little face that she has carved out of a knot of wood that she found sawn from an ancient hawthorne tree. Bolly-Bolly has the ability to speak to Meg, and to show her visions of the places and people around her.
From Bolly-Bolly, Meg learns that Patience Sutcliffe, the daughter of the village cloth merchant, lies in her bed chamber seemingly possessed by evil spirits. When confronted by Reverend Eastwood, the puritanical minister, Patience names Meg as her tormentor, and the young girl realizes that she is accused of witchcraft.
Afraid for her life, Meg flees her village for Halifax, a nearby town, and the centre of Yorkshire’s woollen trade, hoping to find her father who has travelled there to sell his cloth. Instead, she finds that her father has been falsely accused of theft and thrown in the local jail to await trail. She meets Ned, a travelling puppeteer, and Simon, apprentice to a charlatan apothecary, both of whom are working at the Halifax fair.
Desperate to find a way to help her father, Meg confides her problems to Ned and Simon, and discovers in them two kindred souls, eager to help her save her father and escape the clutches of Mr. Sutcliffe, father to Patience, and of Reverend Eastwood. But matters become increasingly complicated when if becomes clear that Meg’s father is the victim of a conspiracy, and that Meg’s talent for carving wood border dangerously upon magical.
Set during the Interregnum, when Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans ruled England, Woodenface is a wonderful adventure that draws upon the English tradition on the Greenman and celebrates the magic that exists in all living things.
FernFolio Editor