Things Found on the Mountain

In a remote valley in the Black Mountains farmer's daughter Beth is a child of nature, utterly at one with the rugged landscape as she tends the farms wayward sheep. But change is coming to the mountains, the modern world enters in the form of the construction of a reservoir in a neighbouring valley. Parts of the mountain are literally taken away to build the dam, there are people, machinery, noise, the subjugation of nature. Change arrives too with the First World War, emptying the mountains of young men including Beth's beloved brother Daniel, who goes 'missing in action'. Their mother turns to religion, their father falls silent. Beth takes to the mountain, and solitude.  The arrival of Eric Gill's colony of catholic artists means more change, and more tension with the families of the valley. Although wary of these newcomers Beth meets Gabriel, an apprentice letter carver, who draws her out of her solitude and who also loves the mountain. When the colony relocates to England Beth faces a heart-wrenching choice between her home and the person she loves.  Things Found on the Mountain is a Hardyesque coming of age story. At its heart is the dramatic landscape, which suffers, like Beth, a loss of innocence. This moving novel will appeal to fans of Sian James and Maeve Binchy.

Diana Powell was born in Llanelli and read English at Aberystywth. She lives now in Pembrokeshire. She won the Allen Raine Short Story Award in 2013 and the Penfro Festival Short Story Competition the following year. Her novella, The Sisters of Cynvael, won the Cinnamon Press Literature award and will be published in 2024. Her stories have been shortlisted in several competitions. 'Whale-Watching' won the ChipLit Festival Prize, was runner up in the Society of Authors Tom-Gallon award and featured in Best Short Stories 2020. Powell also won the Bristol Short Story Prize in 2022. A novella, Esther Bligh, was published by Holland House in 2018 and a story collection, Trouble Crossing the Bridge, by Chaffinch in 2020. Powell read at the Llangwm and Abergavenny festivals in 2022.