The Winter Ghosts includes exquisitely beautiful descriptions of the French Pyrenees, which contrast with the horrific events that take place, both in World War I and in Fabrissa’s story of the Cathars. Mosse makes you wonder what is in the manuscript, and what has happened to Freddie, in the five years in between. The chapters at the beginning and the end are told in third person, while most of the novel is told in Freddie’s first person narrative. The significance of the manuscript becomes clear in the main part of the novel.

It begins and ends in 1933, five years after the main part of the story, with Freddie in a bookstore in Toulouse, showing a bookseller a manuscript in a language he cannot read. Mosse uses an interesting framing device in this novel. Is it time travel, a ghost story, or even Freddie’s imaginings? All of these are possibilities. I will only say that what happens is open to interpretation. But there is more to Fabrissa’s story, which I will not reveal here. The village had been one of the last holdouts of the Cathars, and the Crusaders trapped the survivors in a cave. Readers of Labyrinth will be familiar with their story. In a beautiful spot overlooking the village, Fabrissa tells Freddie a story of the Cathars, a Christian sect from the 13th and 14th centuries, who were considered heretical by the Catholic Church and massacred by Crusaders and Inquisitors. Then a fight breaks out in the room, and Freddie and Fabrissa escape through a hidden passageway. He tells her his whole story, about George’s death and his own grief. There he meets a young woman named Fabrissa, who has also lost a brother, and is immediately attracted to her. At first he does not want to go, but he does, and he finds himself in a room surrounded by people in medieval costumes. Freddie finds a room at an inn, where the landlady invites him to the festival.

It turns out that the villagers are preparing for a festival. After being released from the sanatorium, Freddie travels in the French Pyrenees, hoping to heal his emotional wounds.įreddie’s car skids off the road during a blizzard, and he comes across a remote village, which seems deserted. Freddie’s depression leads to a nervous breakdown, and he spends time in a sanatorium. His parents have been emotionally distant from him, and they always preferred George. Freddie has never been able to put his emotions to rest after the loss of his brother, who was the only person he had truly loved. In 1928, ten years after the end of World War I, a young Englishman named Freddie Watson is still mourning the death of his brother George, who was killed in the war.

Unlike Labyrinth and Mosse’s other epic novels, The Winter Ghosts is relatively short, but it packs an emotional punch. The Winter Ghosts is a hauntingly beautiful story of grief, loss, and healing by Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth.

The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse