Cecilia Ekbäck – författare

Winner of the 2016 HWA Goldsboro Debut Crown Award.'Exquisitely suspenseful, beautifully written, and highly recommended.' Lee ChildThere are six homesteads on Blackåsen Mountain.A day's journey away lies the empty town. It comes to life just once, in winter, when the Church summons her people through the snows. Then, even the oldest enemies will gather.But now it is summer, and new settlers are come.It is their two young daughters who find the dead man, not half an hour's walk from their cottage.The father is away. And whether stubborn, or stupid, or scared for her girls, the mother will not let it rest.To the wife who is not concerned when her husband does not come home for three days; to the man who laughs when he hears his brother is dead; to the priest who doesn't care; she asks and asks her questions, digging at the secrets of the mountain.They say a wolf made those wounds. But what wild animal cuts a body so clean?

'A gripping, beautifully written novel that I devoured in a day...as thrilling as it is fascinating' Hannah Kent, author of Burial RitesSweden 1856.Blackasen Mountain: a distant place of rumour, superstition and now - murder.They say it was the Lapp who killed the three men. But something is not right.Ester knows it - but to help the settlers is to betray her people.Magnus feels it too. Sent by the Minister to survey the mountain, he cannot resist its mystery.And Lovisa: banished from the city by her father, travelling with her sister's husband, she is perhaps closest of them all to the wildness of the place.Three people, caught in the haunting light of the midnight sun.