An antiquarian’s widow discovers her husband’s lost journals and sets out on a journey of remembrance across 1920s England and France, retracing his steps in search of healing and independence. Along alignments of place and memory she meets mystic Dion Fortune, ley-line pioneer Alfred Watkins, and a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle obsessed with the Cottingley Fairies. From Glastonbury to Carnac, she visits the ancient sites that obsessed her husband and, tested by both earthly and unearthly forces, she discovers a power within herself.
Cover art by Steve Hambidge
The Long Woman – The Windsmith Elegy Vol. 1
FICTION
‘The Long Woman is a tender yet intimate journey of personal discovery, which the writer walks with his heroine, and any reader who would travel with them ... A beautiful book, filled with the quiet of dawn, and the first cool breaths of new life, it reveals how the poignance of real humanity is ever sprinkled with magic.’
Emma Restall Orr
'I must say that I think this is a very good book ... evocative and emotionally intense.'
R.J. Stewart
'Kevan Manwaring writes in the bardic tradition of English prose, one which honours the vision of our landscape as sacred ground and knows that our lives and history are at their most intense when lived in close relation to its claims on the soul.'
Lindsay Clarke
'Beautiful, imaginative, poignant, magical writing. A great story with memorable characters.'
Nimue Brown
'This beautifully written book takes the reader through a woman's journey of discovery through a sacred landscape, poetry and myth to release her inner potential. Plumbing the highs and lows of human experience, "The Long Woman" is full of surprises. In a lively and engaging manner it puts into question our modern presuppositions about our relationship to the natural world and life after death. I'd recommend this to everybody.'
Lorna Smithers
'Combining a gentle yet evocative language with deep spiritual insight, "The Long Woman" is an inspiring journey into the heart of "all things" and a delightful read for anybody who explores the ways we are inseparably interwoven with each other and creation in order to face and master our own life's lessons.'
Ola Yemaya
'I could not put this book down and found it both entertaining and educational. It made me want to follow the journey that Maud had taken ... It was something "completely different" and a book that I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone. I laughed, I cried and there were moments when I felt afraid and deep in thought. It took me on a journey of the English countryside and on a spiritual journey too.'
Lyn Wiltshire
'This book had me in tears in a couple of places. It takes a magical look at a woman's jouney of discovery through her trying to understand her dead husband. I don't want to give away the plot but as she digs deeper into herself and the mysteries of the magical landscape, the reader is invited to question their own motives and sense of freedom.'
Ian Davidson