Merre
The Forest of Dean, 1011 AD. Everything Abbe loved has been taken.
A story of survival and memory, of love and murder.
The Forest of Dean, 1011 AD. Everything Abbe loved has been taken. The Viking raid came without warning. Her village burned. Her family scattered or slaughtered. She survived, bloodied and violated and utterly alone, and now stands on a hilltop facing an impossible future.
The man who destroyed her village is returning. The warrior who took her body swears he will take more. All that remains to Abbe is a choice: feed the hatred consuming her, or find something stronger in the ruins of her world.
Set against the verdant forests and ancient rivers of 11th-century Britain, Merre is a story of survival and memory, of love and murder, of a woman learning to live when everything worth living for is gone. It is a novel about forgiveness. Not of villains, but of the unbearable humanity of those who wound us. And about whether love, once shattered, can ever be whole.
For eight years, this manuscript lay hidden. A story of loss and grace written for the love of the telling, by a woman who understood both intimately. It is published now in her memory, and for readers who believe that the deepest strength is not in revenge, but in refusing to let loss have the last word.
Anne M. CoxAnne M. Cox
Anne M. Cox was born on June 25, 1944, in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, England, on the edge of the Forest of Dean, the ancient woodland whose bluebells and rivers run through the pages of this novel. She emigrated to the United States and made her home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
She was an accomplished landscape painter known for her seascapes and mountains. The same eye that filled her canvases with sea and forest and sky shaped the landscapes of this book, and everyone who knew her remembers the same things: her warmth, her quick wit, and a creative spirit that never sat still.
She wrote Merre over five years, from 2013 to 2018, for the love of the telling: a story of survival, forgiveness, and the endurance of love through unbearable loss. It is her only novel, published in her memory by the family who loved her.
Anne passed away peacefully at her home on September 19, 2018.
For my mother, Anne M. Cox.
I found this on your computer after you were gone, and for eight years I couldn't bring myself to read it. I told myself I wasn't in the right headspace. The truth is I was afraid. You were the most remarkable person I have ever known, and I couldn't bear the thought that your book might be anything less than you were — or that if it were, I'd have to carry that quietly and never share you with the people who loved you.
I was wrong to be afraid. I should have known a woman like you wouldn't leave behind anything small.
What I found instead was you — the bluebells in the Forest of Dean where you were born and to which you always returned, your belief that even the people who wounded us, are still people, your refusal to let loss have the last word. You gave Abbe your forest. Of course you did.
It took me until I'd done some surviving on my own to be ready to meet you here. I'm glad I waited until I could read it the way it deserved — not as a task, but as your son, hearing your voice one more time.
Here it is, Mom. The world should have always had it.
— Matt