Ashes & Stones
A Scottish journey in search of witches and witness
Ashes & Stones is an Amazon.com Deal for April! The Kindle edition is only $1.99
It’s summer. I stand where perhaps Ellen stood, in this ground thick with new thistle and long grass. She would have ken this coast in all weathers: in the summer when it was as gentle as a lake and in the winter, with the high winds and stinging salt spray.’
"...an incantational group biography...Shaw passes over centuries-old footsteps like fingers on Braille; the lilt of her voice on the page is lyrical magic." —The New York Times
Ashes and Stones is a moving and personal journey, along rugged coasts and through remote villages and modern cities, in search of the traces of those accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Scotland. We visit modern memorials, roadside shrines and standing stones, and roam among forests and hedge mazes, folk lore and political fantasies. From fairy hills to forgotten caves, we explore a spellbound landscape.
“…atmospheric, scholarly – and gripping – Allyson Shaw…gives life to many of the women burned as witches in Scotland. Shocking and important – it made me realise this hasn’t been done before, nor have I questioned why until now.”
—Laline Paull, author of Pod and The Bees.
Allyson Shaw has built a monument in words to the thousands persecuted as witches in Scotland. A fascinating and necessary book.
-- Peter Ross, author of A Tomb with a View, winner of the Saltaire Award for nonfiction, 2022.
Allyson Shaw untangles the myth of witchcraft and gives voice to those erased by it. Her elegant and lucid prose weaves threads of history and feminist reclamation, alongside beautiful travel, nature and memoir writing, to create a vibrant memorial. This is the untold story of the witches’ monuments of Scotland and the women’s lives they mark. Ashes and Stones is a trove of folklore linking the lives of modern women to the horrors of the past, and it is record of resilience and a call to choose and remember our ancestors.
Allyson Shaw’s journey around Scotland in search of witches and witness is both deeply insightful and profoundly respectful. Shaw’s writing is utterly compelling and her perspective is vital. I was spellbound from start to finish, Ashes & Stone is a work of devotion. This is what it means to write with care and with candour. Ashes and Stones is both genuine memorial and galvanising activism in book form.
—Sally Huband, Author of Sea Bean
“Ashes & Stones is its own reminder of a dark period in Scotlands’s past, but also carries a warning for the present day…This is not the book you think it is, and it is all the better for it.” --Alistair Braidwood, Snack Magazine
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Ashes & Stones is out now. Here are buying options:
For the North American Edition