Excerpt from The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

For centuries the Sister Bells rang out across the village. They rang for the living, the dying and the dead, for marriages and Christmas Mass, for baptisms and confirmations, and sometimes for forest fires, floods and landslides. Folk rarely moved to or away from the village, those who did leave never came back, and many children believed that all church bells must sound like the Sister Bells, just as those who live near a magnificent view take it for granted.

The bells hung safely in the tower until 1880, when they and the village were the subject of sudden changes and unbending wills. One of the bells would even finish up under water and be hauled up again, and the only person who would have any power over their fate was a young girl of Hekne lineage. Her sacrifice was no less than that made by the Hekne parents centuries ago, but hers had to be made in secret, and for some time only one man would remember her for it. Those who might have wanted to remember would have found it hard to understand her actions without knowing the story of the stave church and the village she called home.

Excerpt from the new book The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting published by The Overlook Press © 2020