The Haunting of Fortune Farm

It’s October half-term, and 12 year-old Edie and her 6 year-old brother Pip have to accept being sent to stay with their grandmother Lolly, whom they hardly know, high in the Irish mountains, while Mum goes on a conference for one of her three jobs.  Edie used to love being on the shores of Lough Ivarr when Dad was alive, but now the place also reminds her how much she misses him, and she has an uncomfortable feeling as they get nearer Lolly’s farm, not helped by having to navigate for Mum using a handmade map with strange symbols on it. Another person is commenting in italics, worrying about someone else waking up, and it is clear that there will be adventure ahead.

Edie discovers that the symbols are runes, and finds out more about them, also discovering her Dad’s boyhood Diary, in which he describes his hunt for Viking treasure. She also hears fragments of poems e.g. “Blood spiller, Life taker, Flesh slicer, Death maker”, describing a missing sword, and realises, from learning about the Vikings at school, that these poems are kennings.  The person commenting turns out to be a girl of about her own age, called Coco, but she is always pale and cold to the touch: it takes Edie a while to realise why this is so. When young Pip disappears on a bat-hunting expedition (Pip is VERY keen on bats, and knows a lot about them), she and Coco join forces to rescue him.

There is a lot happening in this book that it would be a pity to reveal in this review, but it’s a very exciting story, and would be especially useful for children ‘doing the Vikings’.  Both Edie and Lolly are eventually able to come to terms with loss, and the book ends with a more united and contented family.

Sophie Kirtley is a prize-winning poet, and also the author of middle-grade novels The Wild Way Home and The Way to Impossible Island, and enjoys writing adventurous books for children about things that matter to her – family, friendship and the natural world.