The Willow By Your Side
Cover design by Vince Haig
To be young is to know magic, to see the woods for what they are and recognise visions when you see them. In the aftermath of war, a young boy tries to hold his family together, under a man who brought his nightmares back from the battlefield. As his sister recovers from a terrible assault by their father, she teaches him about the magic in the land, the tombs of ancient kings, about the treacherous Red Cap and the places where the adults don’t go. When she disappears, all eyes turn to their father. They search the woods, pushing deeper into the strange spaces where myths grow among the ancient oaks. But only the boy knows the secret paths they took, and the way to the lake where wishes come true. A story of the potent and dark spaces of folklore, channelling Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, Haynes plunges deep into the landscape, revealing the darkness that hides beneath.
‘Haynes's dreamlike prose weaves an enigmatic, impressionistic tale of the English landscape, folklore, storytelling, and the ways that the trauma of war spreads through lives like an infection. Suffused with a sense of place and people haunted by long, aching histories both personal and geographic, it's beautiful, bleak, and unforgettable.’
Lynda E. Rucker, Shirley Jackson Award winning author of Now It’s Dark & You’ll Know When You Get There
‘Like Alan Garner’s Boneland, The Willow By Your Side weaves realistic violence and trauma through British children’s fantasy of the 1960s. But instead of the aftermath of a child’s heroic adventure ruining the life of the adult, as in Garner’s novel, here the real-world horror bleeds into and contaminates a boy’s dreams of woodland adventure. It’s a powerful conceit that makes for a structurally brave and harrowing novel. A rediscovered classic of sixties folk fantasy, if it had been steeping the intervening years in a sump of dread.’
Timothy J. Jarvis, writer and scholar, author of The Wanderer and Treatises on Dust
‘The Willow By Your Side uses imagery and intelligence to create a unique path through family, folklore, and trauma. It's an abundantly rich read.’
Aliya Whiteley, BSFA award winning writer of The Misheard World, Three Eight One, and The Beauty
‘This is a beautifully written book, full of stunning prose and imagery. Escaping a damaged family that is under the shadow of a father’s trauma, a boy embarks on a search for his missing sister. This journey takes both him and the reader into a sinister world where nothing is as it seems, and danger lurks in the shadows.’
Elizabeth Lee, author of Cunning Women
'A profound meditation on English landscape and history and myth, wrapped around a core of damaged lives. A book of great beauty with the darkest of hearts.'
Dave Hutchinson, author of the Europe sequence