Hookbone is the name of a remote farm on a hill where Eleanor Ashburn spent her childhood – a world of well-bred depravity. Here, there were no rules except enunciation, manners and who could hit the hardest. One of six surviving children, she was left to roam the countryside unsupervised: washing her own clothes from a young age, navigating the volatile games of her older siblings, and learning early on that appearances mattered much more than the truth.

As an adult, having climbed – mostly intact – from the wreckage of her childhood, Eleanor turns detective. She combs through family lore, traces the legacy of her father’s desperate faith as far as the Vatican, and confronts her mother in a long, powerfully moving interview – all in the search to make sense of the difficult legacy bequeathed by the people who raised her.

Hookbone is a searing, lyrical literary memoir about growing up wild in the heart of an outwardly respectable English family. Told with extraordinary beauty and control, it is a story of brutality, silence, and the long shadow childhood casts over an adult life.