Bog queen : a novel / Anna North.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER , PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ESQUIRE

In the gorgeous new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of Outlawed , "a strangely well-preserved Iron Age body turns up in an English bog, and the American forensic anthropologist on the case is thrust into an absorbing, complex mystery" ( People magazine).

When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Agnes, an American forensic anthropologist, is called to investigate. But this body is not like any she's ever seen. Though its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, it is almost completely preserved.

Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past, called to understand and avenge the death of an Iron Age woman more like her than she knows. Along the way, she must contend with peat-cutters who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Then there's the moss itself: a complex repository of artifacts and remains, with its own dark stories to tell.

As Agnes faces the deep history of what she has unearthed, she's also forced to question what she thought she knew about her talent, her self-reliance, and her place in the world. Flashing between the uncertainty of post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen brims with contemporary urgency and ancient wisdom as it connects across time two gifted, farsighted young women learning to harness their strange strengths in a landscape more mysterious and complex than either can imagine.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

The discovery of a woman's body in an English bog kicks off the piercing latest from North (Outlawed). It's 2018 and American forensic scientist Dr. Agnes Linstrom is tasked with identifying the remains, which are uncannily well-preserved. Though initially believed to be a murder victim from 1961, the body turns out to date back more than two millennia. Agnes needs more time to provide answers about who the woman was, but her work is complicated by interventions from a peat moss company eager to resume its harvesting in the area, and from environmental activists calling for a stop to Agnes's forensic digging. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of Agnes and the long-dead woman, a young druid leader who travels from her village near the bog to a settlement ruled by a king who has welcomed Roman influence, sometime around 50 BCE. As the druid returns home, she is badly wounded by a rival leader. Eventually, Agnes determines these wounds were not the cause of the druid's death. Part of the novel's thrill comes from the way in which North leaves the rest of the mystery for the reader to piece together, and Agnes's partial access to the truth is made even more poignant through the masterful depiction of how painfully out of sync she is with other people ("She spoke in what she thought was a normal and measured way... but every time she could see the senior professors sneaking sidelong looks at one another"). North reaches new heights with this brilliant novel. (Oct.)

Booklist Review

North's latest, following Outlawed (2021), is a remarkably crafted tale that asks important questions about the imprint we leave on our loved ones, our culture, and our land. Agnes is an American forensic anthropologist working to identify a body found buried in the moss of an English bog. Early assumptions are that it belongs to a 1960s murder victim, and that the woman's niece wants answers about her mysterious death. But the immaculately preserved body is, in fact, much older by about two millennia. North manages to write captivatingly detailed explanations of body-preservation-by-moss and to craft singular characters. We not only learn about the introverted Agnes, but her narrative alternates with that of an unnamed woman from pre-Christian England. Like Agnes, she is driven by her calling. A druid whose healing and mystical knowledge was passed down by her mother, she travels to a distant village at a time when the Roman Empire threatens northern expansion. Both women are tenacious, but hampered by self-doubt. They must overcome uncertainty about friends and family to find a balance between change and preservation.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Readers will be watching for the latest from this Reese's Book Club author.

Kirkus Book Review

An American anthropologist in northern England becomes entangled in emotional and literal quagmires after identifying an ancient body in a bog. Agnes has a way with people--but only if they're dead. A gifted student, she graduated from high school early and powered through university and doctoral studies to become a forensic anthropologist. Feeling oppressed by her doting father's omnipresence and a too-comfortable boyfriend, Agnes decides to take a postdoc position in Manchester. She is called in to assist with the identification of what authorities believe is a murder victim killed by her husband in 1961 and buried in a peat bog, but Agnes immediately sees, and soon confirms, that this is a body older than any she (or, for that matter, almost anyone) has ever unearthed. In the novel's first narrative track, Agnes attempts to conduct an excavation at the bog, caught in a web of conflicting interests that includes the peat company, the press, the niece of the still-undiscovered murder victim, a bioarchaeologist and her precocious teen daughter, and a group of environmental activists intent on rewilding the peat. The book's second narrative belongs to "the druid of Bereda," a Celtic priest from ancient Europe who navigates her diplomatic and spiritual duties during the fraught beginnings of the Roman Empire's expansion. (The moss narrates briefly, too.) North's previous novel,Outlawed (2021), turned the Western genre on its head, and here she tackles historical fiction, swinging for the fences by taking on an ancient culture (and one that largely lacks written records). Perhaps it's inevitable that the character of Agnes cannot help but be less magnetic than the regal druid. Nevertheless, this is a memorable tale of the unexpected linkages of history, land, and female power. North widens her range with this layered mystery-meets-ancient-history mashup. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.