The Upas Tree

The Upas Tree poisons everything in its shade…

In her fifties now, Ishbel Mackintosh has lived most of her meek life, quietly and dutifully.

An unremarkable child, she took her late grandfather’s sermons of an all-seeing and all-vengeful God to heart.

Flesh of my flesh, he said to her. Her father had, in blasphemy, told her to ignore him.

As an adult, she worked within her family’s business. There, she once had what she could have called her only friend, Kirsty MacKay.

But like Ishbel’s grandfather and the aunties and uncles she never met, Kirsty dies tragically – taken in her view, by the Lord.

Soon, she is forced to give up the shop anyway.

Her mother, Mrs. Mackintosh is frail and with only her pension to rely on, her mother has no money to pay the helping girl.

Or so she says.

However, as befitting a dutiful child of God, Ishbel gives up her business anyway and returns to her childhood home, The Pines.

Isabel has to cook, clean and take care of every aspect and wish that her mother demands – in a house that her old-fashioned mother refuses to ‘modernise’.

Then Mrs. Mackintosh dies.

And to add to her shock, Ishbel’s inheritance is staggering.

It turns out her mother lied about having little money – all so Mrs Mackintosh could keep Ishbel as her personal nurse and servant and with none of the pay.

Ishbel is furious. Yet, now, she is free to do as she pleases…

Or so she thought.

Too old to start a fresh life, too young to accept her lot in life…

Torn between what she knows and the unknown, Ishbel is forced to confront her past and the people who moulded her.

Set in the wild and rough beauty of the Scottish Highlands, The Upas Tree is a tale of regret, absolution and hope.

‘Eva Hanagan tells a story of supernatural evil with such quiet conviction and sets it in such pleasing rural domesticity that its full force only slowly pervades the reader’s consciousness. When it does it is absolute …’ - Shirley Toulson, British Book News 

‘Eva Hanagan writes with an easy and natural grace which gives to the life of her recluse an evocative, unforced descriptiveness of an impressive order.’ - Derek Stanford, Scotsman 

‘Mrs Hanagan is good at uneasy states of mind and feelings, and very good at the temptations of suicide … an accomplished beginning.’ - Robert Nye, - Guardian 

‘Between the covers of this book is a really thrilling story … It should restore to many a reader his faith in the pleasure of reading for reading’s sake.’ - West Sussex County Times 

‘ … so beautifully and precisely visualised that I too was enthralled … a delicious piece of water-colour Gothic.’ - Michael Maxwell-Scott, Daily Telegraph 

Eva Hanagan was a Scottish author, who died at the age of 85, in 2009. During a Foreign Office posting to Vienna after the Second World War, Hanagan met her husband, with whom she had two sons. She published her first novel, In Thrall, in 1977. Following which, there was a fairly rapid succession of novels: Playmates (1978), and A Knock at the Door (1982). She settled in Sussex, from where she authored her novels.