The fog thickens over Victorian London as Patience Worth returns, drawn deeper into the shadows that lurk beyond rational explanation…
The winter mist folds around her like a garment she left behind in childhood as Patience steps off the train at Bolam station, a place reduced to merely a signpost with a single syllable.
Something waits for her in this remote village—something connected to a curse that began with the return of Postlethwaite from the East, passed through generations by means more mysterious than blood alone.
Armed with her notebook and analytical mind, Patience faces a landscape transformed by hoarfrost that refracts the morning light in a thousand splinters, giving the bog a diamond-crusted perversity. But beauty conceals danger as she continues her investigation despite warnings from locals who refuse to venture past certain boundaries.
With only seven days until the full moon, Patience must gain access to Blackthorne Hall’s library to find the last, unedited account of what befell Edmund Postlethwaite, and possibly the means by which the curse might be reversed or at least contained.
As she tells the reluctant Mrs. Finch she’ll return by Sunday (a lie told well), Patience steps into the street with her valise, feeling the city already tilting toward afternoon, the air bracing as a slap.
Will her methodical mind be enough to confront whatever ancient evil awaits in Blackthorne Hall? Can she decipher the final entries of a forgotten journal with the detachment, and perhaps the mercy, it deserves?