The House at the Edge of the World

Shortly after their eighteenth birthday, twins Morwenna and Corwin’s father dies accidentally (and ignominiously) when he falls off a cliff, drunk. With him go the last vestiges of their childhood, and soon after both move away to start their separate adult lives. Corwin sets off on a fifteen-year itinerant tour of rainless, war-torn countries while Morwenna leads a quiet (some might say anti-social) life as a bookbinder in east London. When their beloved grandfather, Matthew, grows ill, the pull of home is too strong to resist and they find themselves back in the family house in Devon, drawn to the map, their grandfather’s life’s work. Over the past fifty years, Matthew has meticulously painted every important event in the family’s life on top of an ordnance survey chart. Part record and part legend, the map has been a subject of fascination to Morwenna and Corwin for as long as they can remember. But is there a deeper meaning hidden among the tiny pictures of shipwrecks, asps and farting devils, and could it lead them closer to what really happened to their father all those years ago?