The Strange Woman

A new novel about an old story - The Timble Witches – then and now
The Strange Woman is the new novel by Timble writer and sheep farmer Stephanie Shields. Stephanie learned about the Timble Witches from one of their descendants. This man was indignant about the way these women were treated then and have been ever since.
Over the years, thoughts of these women kept coming into the author’s mind. How horrible it must have been for them - to be taken off to York Castle, incarcerated, interrogated, tortured - even though they were acquitted. Twice they, and their families, went through this ordeal, and each time the women would have been terrified, expecting to be hanged at Knavesmire.
Reading the Daemonologia by their accuser Edward Fairfax aroused the author’s suspicions. Why did this ‘man of quality’ – a poet with a high reputation - become obsessed with these local women, accusing them of witchcraft and devil worship? Why was he prepared to risk his own young daughters’ health, safety, and sanity by allowing these girls to testify?
After careful research Stephanie came up with an alternative tale. She tells it from the women’s point of view, especially that of Margaret Hall, the strange woman of the title. In Margaret, Fairfax has certainly picked on the wrong woman.
But this is not solely a tale about Timble between the years 1621-1623. Four hundred years later, the descendant of the strange woman, curmudgeonly sheep farmer Foster Hall, seeks a wife. The Timble Witches are still here to help him in his quest for love. The witches choose a perfect candidate – Izzie, a modern woman from Hebden Bridge. But the path to true love is not a smooth one and there is a demon to take on and worse.