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The Wind Rose
- Author: Sarah Hall
- Category: Fiction Literary
- Publisher: Faber & Faber (UK)
- Length: 90,000 words
About The Wind Rose
In the mid Nineteenth Century a man from the newly formed Royal Meteorological Society is researching the source of a curious atmospheric phenomenon – The Helm Wind. For centuries this unpredictable fury has blown down the western slopes of the mountains, devastating the Eden valley below, terrifying locals into believing there are aerial demons on the mountain, and confounding scientists.
Determined to understand its vectors and why the equinoxes are said to herald it, John Oliver arrives in the North Country, but the wind, ever unpredictable, does not come. With time on his hands, and a desire to avoid the uncivilized customs of the valley, John Oliver begins to socialise with Colonel Lacey and his mercurial wife, Elizabeth, at Salkeld Hall. He discovers that the belief in supernatural deities extends beyond the peasant folk of the valley, for Elizabeth is obsessed with a Neolithic stone circle in the grounds of Salkeld Hall, known as Long Meg and her Daughters. As their mutual obsession with ‗forces‘ brings John Oliver and Elizabeth Lacey closer, the colonel plans the destruction of Long Meg…
Based on historical events and mythology, and set against the beautiful austerity of the Pennine mountains, THE WIND ROSE is the story of Nature‘s colossal power, in the environment, and within the human landscape.
About the Author
Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize.
In 2004, her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Her third novel, The Carhullan Army, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction and long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC award. It was chosen as one of the Times Best 100 Books of the Decade.
Her fourth novel, How To Paint A Dead Man, was published in 2009. It was longlisted for the Man Booker prize in the same year and won the Portico Prize in 2010. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is working on a fifth novel and a collection of short stories.
Sarah Hall is an honorary fellow of Aberystwyth University, and a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2007). She was a member of Art Council England, North-West region 2008-2009. She regularly tutors for the Faber Academy, the Arvon Foundation, and has taught creative writing in a variety of establishments in the UK and abroad. She currently lives in Cumbria.