In the reign of Charles I, Grissel Jaffray, The Curewife, arrives in Dundee as a new bride and begins a diary, intending to pass the story of her life and the lives of her ancestors to her first-born daughter.
Through the transcription of this diary, a powerful narrative unfolds. Grissel Jaffary has inherited a legacy of uncommon sagacity: the accumulated knowledge of her forebears who possessed the gift of healing and practised witchcraft for more than three centuries.
Grissel is a woman of keen intelligence whose ficitonal journal graphically depicts life in seventeeth-century Dundee: a land of war, plague, political turmoil and fanatical witch-hunts.
This compelling story, based on the very few known facts about the life of a real character, subtly embraces major historical figures and events, from Bannockburn and Robert the Bruce to Cromwell and Monck, regicide and the lost treasure of the River Tay.
Claire-Marie Watson was born and educated in Dundee, and has spent most of her adult life in London, with spells in Canada and Kenya. She worked for many years as a PA to her husband, an architect, and recently returned to dundee after spending several years travelling in Europe. The Curewife is her first novel.
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