#BookshelfSpotlight-‘A Long Shadow’ by Caroline Kington

About the book..

When farmer Dan Maddicott is found shot dead in one of his fields, he leaves behind a young family and a farm deep in debt. Although the coroner records accidental death, village rumours suggest he has taken his own life so that the insurance payout can save his family from ruin.

Dan’s wife, Kate, refuses to believe the gossip and is determined to prove to herself, and her children, that his death was an accident. But could it have been murder? Kate discovers a set of old diaries containing secrets that may reveal how Dan really died.

Set against the backdrop of the farming crisis of the turn of the 21st century, Caroline Kington’s absorbing family drama also tells the secret history of another resident of the farm, decades before, whose tragic tale will come to have major repercussions in the present day.

Published in paperback by Eye Books, ‘A Long Shadow’ is available from the website, now.

Split across different timelines and with different narrators, ‘A Long Shadow’ is an engrossing and intriguing farming dynastic drama. Beginning with Susan,in 1943, running away  from a home for unwed mothers, moving on to Kate,in 2001 whose husband has been found dead on their farm in uncertain circumstances, then back again to 1990,where Kate and husband Dan meet for the first time, this takes a long view of how the actions of one person ripple through the generations that follow.

Kate and Dan run Dan’s family homestead of Watersmeet.After he dies from a shotgun wound, not only does Kate have to reconcile herself with it being a potential suicide-particularly because of the debt his death uncovered and his recently acquired insurance policy-she has to comfort her 2 young children and take over responsibility for all the people hired by the farm. Being an only child, there are no siblings to help out, children Rosie and Ben are too young, and there is a developer snapping at her heels to turn the land into holiday cottages. Without a clue how to run a farm, she bears the weight of a responsibility she is unprepared for-

Oh my God!’ she groaned. ‘What a fraud! What am I doing setting myself at the head of these
people? They know far more about farming than I do. I can call myself the boss, but it’s another
thing to be it…and I’ve so much to learn…’
And she thought of Dan, who had always conducted himself with such quiet authority she’d taken
his role for granted. As his wife, as the farmer’s wife, she’d shared some of that authority, but that
had been the extent of her influence.
And now she was stepping into Dan’s shoes. Still unable to distinguish a heifer from a bullock, she
was becoming a farmer. She was taking on a role that would have been unimaginable to the
ambitious Arts graduate, intent on conquering the media world, thirteen years previously.
No wonder she had quaked when she’d asked for the support of the workforce.
No wonder she felt overwhelmed that they’d given it.

Susan, meanwhile, is all alone in the world, discarded and dispatched to spend her weeks before the birth of her baby doing back breaking chores as penitence,anticipating a 6 week period with her child before he/she is whisked away to who knows where. She shows remarkabe courage in running away given that her husband is missing, presumed dead in the war and she is alone. So added to the mystery of who the baby she is carrying is, is how it links then, in 1990 and 2001 to Watersmeet and the fallout of Dan’s death.

Dan and Kate’s courtship shows how they took over Watersmeet, yet despite being a couple, Dan kept so much from Kate, shouldering the burden of day to day farming without involving her,so that when he dies, she is effectively clueless as to how to run the farm.It adds poignancy to the death as the reader learns about Dan in flashback, seeing how he struggled to keep the farm going from tradition, honour and pride.

The stories interweave with each other as you see the actions of one young woman having ripple effects half a lifetime later.The mystery of Dan’s death is later shown from the perspective of Rosie and Ben and the effects on his children, as you ponder, does the title ‘A Long Shadow’ refers to a sin,whose is it and why? The expectations of a society to have a certain set of people to behave in a certain set of ways creates the catastrophic events which slowly unfold in the book.

At its heart is the farm, the very real struggles that farmers have to turn a profit in a world where competition between suppliers has never been on such a knife edge-those in the UK can clearly remember the media frenzy at the time about BSE (aka as ‘Mad Cow disease’) and Foot and Mouth which caused devastating effects on families who had farmed for generations. The very real spectre of preferring death over perceived failure, masculinity and pride lethally entwined with selling off parcels of land to keep a farm going, all of these are touched on to really drive home the effects of public perceptions of what a farm is and does. The things we, as consumers, expect, and the reality of a working farm are diametrcially opposed and the lack of government support along with a growing population are all contributing factors in the shocking rise of adverse mental health in agricultural workers, and the rise in suicides.

This is not to say that this novel is a ‘whydunnit’ about Dan, nor a searing expostion of English farming issues, it quietly and meaningfully frames a very real problem within the context of this particular family and leaves you researching how you,as a person, can best try to support farmers as a consumer at the very least.

A moving portrait of grief, love and the complexities of life, this is an excellent read that I would highly recommend.

* There’s not much of this month left so get your skates on to the Eye Books Website to take advantage of 30% discount and free p+p using code RACHELREADIT*

About the author..

Caroline Kington spent most of her working life in theatre and television, as a director, producer and founder of the fringe theatre company Antidote Theatre.

Since the death of her husband Miles Kington, the columnist and broadcaster, she has posthumously published three of his books: a humorous memoir of his illness, called ‘How Shall I Tell The Dog?’; a collection of his columns and other writings, ‘The Best By Miles’; and a collection of his celebrated ‘Franglais’ columns that had not appeared in book form before, ‘Le Bumper Book De Franglais’.

In her own right, she is the author of the Summerstoke trilogy of rural comedies. She insists that no character in the series is based on anybody from the small village near Bath where she has lived for many years. Nobody believes her.

Her novel A Long Shadow had its origins in a feature she made for Channel 4 News at the turn of this century about the pressures on farmers as a result of BSE and foot-and-mouth disease.

Links-https://splashesintobooks.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/ai-caroline-kington/

https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/opinion-the-shock-and-sadness-atrural-suicides

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen/1672397/academics-to-combat-depression-in-farmers-as-figures-reveal-one-suicide-every-week/

Twitter @EyeAndLightning