Bright I Burn

A fierce, electrifying novel inspired by the true story of the first woman to be condemned as a witch in Ireland

In thirteenth-century Ireland, a woman with power is a woman to be feared.

Alice, the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper in Kilkenny, grows up watching her mother wither under the constraints of family responsibilities--and she vows that she will never suffer the same fate. In time, she discovers she has a flair for making money, and takes her father’s flourishing business to new heights. But as her riches and stature grow, so too do rumors about her private life. By the time she marries her fourth husband--the three earlier are dead--a storm of local gossip and resentment culminates in a life-threatening accusation . . .

A breathtaking act of imagination, Bright I Burn gives voice to a woman lost to history, who dared to carve a space of her own in a man’s world.

MOLLY AITKEN grew up on the south coast of Ireland. Her first novel, The Island Child, was longlisted for the Authors’ Club First Novel Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, for which she won the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, and has been dramatized for BBC Radio 4. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing and History at Sheffield Hallam University.