Blackthorn Winter

In April, when blackthorn blossom clothes the hedgerows like a wedding veil, there sometimes comes a frost so severe that it seems as if the summer will never come. Country people call this a blackthorn winter.

For Claudia Barron, arriving in the Dorset village of Court Barton that April, blackthorn winter seems like a metaphor for everything that has happened to her. Hiding from her previous life, she adopts an assumed name and applies for a job in the local school. But villages don't much like mysteries and secrets and soon the inhabitants of Court Barton set out to find out what it is that Claudia Barron is hiding from and why.

“Excellently-written, with a gripping ending”

Praise for Sarah Challis's writing: 'I really enjoyed TURNING FOR HOME...I thought it so perceptive... I particularly enjoyed the very touching romance Rosamunde Pilcher
Wiltshire Times
Touching, funny and exciting Blackmore Vale magazine
Sarah Challis is becoming a novelist to be reckoned with Dorset Life
Her evocation of the English countryside is elegiac...a pleasure to read Oxford Times

Sarah Challis has lived in Scotland and California. She now lives in a Dorset village and is married with four sons.

In April, when blackthorn blossom clothes the hedgerows like a wedding veil, there sometimes comes a frost so severe that it seems as if the summer will never come. Country people call this a blackthorn winter.For Claudia Barron, arriving in the Dorset village of Court Barton that April, blackthorn winter seems like a metaphor for everything that has happened to her. Hiding from her previous life, she adopts an assumed name and applies for a job in the local school. But villages don't much like mysteries and secrets and soon the inhabitants of Court Barton set out to find out what it is that Claudia Barron is hiding from and why.

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