Heaven Burns is a historical novella, dramatising one of the most barbarous practices prevalent in Restoration Scotland.
It is 1662 and Scotland suffers a scourge of witches. What else could explain the wars, the plagues, the storms?
Runaway housewife Isobel has a duty to do, acting as clerk to John Dixon, the finest witchpricker in the country. She's sure it's what God wants her to do. She's sure she can keep her growing feelings for Dixon in check.
When a stranger appears telling wild tales of stolen names and false identities, Isobel's loyalty is put to the test. Is the stranger telling her of a great wrong to be put right, or sent from Hell to thwart the witch hunts?
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The background to Heaven Burns is very real. Research estimates that between 1590 and 1622, around 1,000 women may have been executed in Scotland for witchcraft, and many more tried.
In Scotland, under the second King Charles, and especially after the passing of the 1649 Witchcraft Act, local religious leaders began hunt and execute witches. Once a woman had been accused of witchcraft, all that was needed by the local minister was a confession. Instead of a confession however, women could be condemned through the use of witchpricking.
Just as it sounds, witch pricking was a vicious practice, which involved pricking accused women with various needles in order to obtain proof of witchcraft.
The cover and interior illustrations of Heaven Burns show an imaginative rendering of some of the witchpricker's accoutrements and chattels
As well as being brutally drawn in places, Heaven Burns is also a story of passion. It is excellently researched, for anyone interested in historical fiction, especially around the period of Scottish witch hunting.
