Content in their quiet lives cocooned within their cozy cottage alongside Elpseth's four-year-old
daughter and a sassy black cat, the Blackwood sisters spend their days gardening and grinding an
array of flora into tonics and salves. No, life isn't perfect. Isla hides a forbidden love and
Elspeth's dream of having the perfect family crumbled the moment her lover sailed away and left
her with a swollen belly, but these yearnings aren't anything a hard day's work in the soil can't
cure. The year is 1649 in Fife, Scotland, and they are renowned for their kindness and knowledge of botany.
Valerian root to combat melancholia, yarrow leaves to reduce bleeding, and milk thistle
to lower blood sugar, the town has relied on their natural remedies for a decade. That is, until an
elderly patient dies from pneumonia and a young mother and her newborn are taken by the
reaper after the doctor ignores Isla's pleas to operate and bleeds the woman instead.
Three corpses, one liar, and a dozen rumors suddenly grip the small town, thrusting Fife
into the hysteria that plagued the country for 175 years with Elspeth and Isla in its eye.
Friendships sour, suspicion poisons, and violence erupts as the sisters are deemed bana-
bhuidseaches. Witches.
They try to plead their innocence, but their neighbors have no interest in the truth. With
the arrival of John Kincaid, the professional witch pricker, the mania is accelerated and the
townspeople commit the most heinous act in the name of justice. Now, the sisters have nothing
left to lose and swear vengeance upon the community they dedicated their lives to healing. Ergot
fungus to create hallucinations, daffodils to induce vomiting, and cherry laurel to wield
respiratory failure. Their neighbors cry their guilt, convinced they are in league with the devil.
The sisters refuse to disappoint.
