To starve the devil

By Viola Weaver

In the winter of 1874, a thirteen-year-old girl in a starving Yorkshire mining village has not eaten for thirty months. Pilgrims pay a penny to stand at her bed. Her father preaches that she is starving the devil out of her body, and that the devil is losing.

Hester Vane is hired to prove it a lie. A widowed photographer with a failing studio and a past buried under a false name, she must watch Mercy Alderthwaite by day for an ambitious physician and record her wasting on glass. Hester trusts only what light and silver can show. But in the cold room at the top of Gallow Fold, candles burn blue, frost blooms on the inside of the window, and something knocks beneath the floor at night. And the girl in the carved bed knows a name no one in England should know.

As the doctor seals the room for a final, merciless watch, Hester uncovers a village kept alive by silence and a powerful man who needs the truth to stay underground. Exposing it could cost her livelihood, her identity and the fragile trust of a child bound by a vow no one understands.

What is Mercy really starving? And what will it cost to make her eat?

Haunting, atmospheric and quietly devastating, To Starve the Devil is a gothic tragedy of guilt, hunger and the terrible things we feed when we cannot bear to look.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1745324364
• ISBN13: 9781745324361
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Viola Weaver
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.0"