THE INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2023 PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN PRIZE FOR FICTION A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF CBC'S BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS OF 2022 A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magic, love and identity. In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing in Fayne House which depicts her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress, holding Charlotte's brother, Charles Bell. Charlotte has grown up with the knowledge that her mother died in giving birth to her, and that her ...