Burke-Patel’s debut is both a traditional country-house mystery and an examination of loneliness, the difficulty of making connections with others, and how hard it can be to escape the roles imposed on us by family and society' Guardian'Superbly and elegantly written... executed with skill, finesse and considerable compassion. A very impressive debut from a fully-formed writer' Irish IndependentAnna Deerin moves to a remote Cotswold cottage to become a gardener, trying to strip away everything she’s spent all her life as a woman striving for, craving the anonymity and privacy her new off-grid life provides.

But when she clears the last vegetable bed and digs up not twigs but bones, the outside world is readmitted. With it comes Detective Inspector Hitesh Mistry, who has his own reasons for a new start in the village of Upper Magna. Drawn in spite of herself to this unknown woman from another time, Anna is determined to uncover her identity and gain recognition for her, if not justice.

As threats to Anna and her new life grow closer, she and DI Mistry will find that this murder is inextricably bound up with issues of gender, family, community, race and British identity itself – all as relevant in decades past as they are to Anna today.