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The Herbalist 
Niamh Boyce, 2013
Penguin
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780241964583



Summary
Voted Newcomer of the Year at the 2013 Irish Book Awards, The Herbalist is a vividly imagined tale of love, lust and longing set in a midlands Irish town.

A stranger claiming to be a herbal expert appears one morning in the market square and the local people are soon flocking to the exotic visitor. He seems to have a cure for everything that ails them.  But as the summer progresses life becomes more complicated and dangerous for the herbalist and his devotees.

This is a rich multi-layered story of life in 1930s Ireland told through the eyes of four women, each of whose fate is changed irrevocably by the herbalist. (From the publisher.)