A wayward maid. A sea-bit priest. A town coming apart at the seams.
1816, a crow fly from the drawing rooms of Regency England.
Just six months after Princetown Prison releases its last man, an unravelling is underway. Work is gone. Livings lost. Dartmoor, ancient and indifferent, waits to swallow what remains.
On the edge of things, Tara Tye gulps for air in this drowning town. Craving escape yet tethered to the legacy of her foremothers, she gambles upon a tainted rite that bloodies the moor and leaves a sister for dead.
Faced with a dark accusation, Tara reaches for Reverend Jasper Elias Finch. Son of a trawlerman, once a sea captain humbled by disgrace, Jasper ministers to his dwindling flock, believing his soul beyond salvation. His moorland penance is disrupted when a fugitive arrives at his door offering a chance of redemption he shall not refuse.
But how can this long-forgotten priest live a life less lonely when the past will not let him be?
Draggletails is a folk gothic yarn of moral consequence and restrained desire, where love won't settle, and every remedy leaves a scar.
An ode to honour and hubris.