Catherine Czerkawska
Catherine Czerkawska is a critically acclaimed writer of long and short fiction, non-fiction and plays. Her novels include The Curiosity Cabinet, The Physic Garden, The Posy Ring, Bird of Passage and The Jewel, about the life of Robert Burns’s wife, Jean Armour.
In 2019 Contraband published A Proper Person to be Detained, an intriguing exploration of family history that takes us from 19th-century Ireland to the industrial heartlands of England and Scotland. Following on from this, The Last Lancer is a personal account of loss and survival in Poland and Ukraine, a book with a tragic resonance, given the current situation in that country.
Catherine’s stage plays include Wormwood, about the Chernobyl disaster, and Quartz, both commissioned by Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre. She has also written more than 100 hours of drama for BBC Radio 4.
She spent four years as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of the West of Scotland and when not writing, collects and deals in the antique textiles that occasionally find their way into her fiction.
The Posy Ring
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Buy The Posy Ring
A beautiful literary historical romance from the author of The Curiosity Cabinet
When antiques seller Daisy Graham inherits an ancient house on the Hebridean island of Garve, she’s daunted by its size and isolation. But the building, its jumble of contents, its wilderness
of a garden and the island itself prove themselves so fascinating that she’s soon captivated. She’s also attracted to Cal Galbraith, who is showing an evident interest in the house and its new owner, yet she’s suspicious of his motives – with good reason, it seems.
In parallel with their story runs that of sixteenth-century cousins Mateo and Francisco, survivors from the ill-fated Spanish Armada who find safe passage to the island.There, one of them falls in love with the laird’s daughter. The precious gold posy (poesy) ring he gives her is found centuries later. Are its haunting engraved mottoes, un temps viendra and vous et nul autre, somehow significant now for Daisy and Cal?
REVIEWS OF The Posy Ring
“Skilful and, at times, poetic writing… The author cleverly intertwines the historical and modern-day stories. The characters in both the past and present are finely drawn and believable… I was entranced.” Penny Ingham, Historical Novels Review
“A lyricism which conjures up vivid pictures of landscape and a sparse, readable style which drives the plot along.” The Scotsman
“Excellent … a beautifully crafted novel that immerses the reader in the lives and loves of people whose stories are played out in the same place, but over four centuries apart … Catherine Czerkawska deftly weaves the strands of her novel, painting a rich pen picture.” Undiscovered Scotland