The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis Summary: A Chilling Tale of Fear
Introduction
In the summer of 1701, the River Thames runs so low that the ferryman’s punt scrapes the stones.
Five orphaned sisters, clad in black after their grandmother’s death, cross that river and refuse to speak to the man rowing them.
That small act of silence sets off a chain of events that will consume an entire Oxfordshire parish.
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis is a gothic historical novel set in the village of Little Nettlebed, where drought, failing harvests, and old superstitions have left the residents tense and watchful.
When a local ferryman claims he saw the Mansfield sisters turn into barking dogs at dusk, the rumour spreads faster than anyone can stop it.
The novel follows the sisters, their nearly blind grandfather, a lovesick farmhand, and the villagers who decide what kind of girls deserve to live among them.
TL;DR: The Short Version
- Setting: Little Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, in the rainless summer of 1701, as the Thames dries to bare rock.
- Central event: Ferryman Pete Darling spreads a rumour that the five Mansfield sisters transform into dogs at dusk.
- Escalation: Slaughtered livestock, a vicar’s exorcism claims, a doctor’s diagnosis, and a mob form the novel’s rising pressure.
- Core themes: Mass hysteria, misogyny, masculine violence, sisterly solidarity, and a natural world decaying alongside human empathy.
- Ending note: A killing, a false confession, an escape, and a final image of the sisters running free as rain returns.
Who Will Enjoy This Book
Readers of folk horror, historical fiction set in early eighteenth-century England, and stories about witch hunts and mass hysteria.
Those drawn to lyrical, atmospheric prose and sisterhood-centred narratives will find familiar ground here. It also suits readers interested in how rumours become convictions.
Book Snapshot
- Genre & Subgenre: Historical Fiction / Gothic Fiction / Folk Horror / Feminist Historical Drama
- Core Narrative Tropes: Mass hysteria, small-town suspicion, outsider protagonists, unreliable rumour, folk transformation
- Tone & Atmosphere: Lyrical, eerie, somber, sun-bleached, claustrophobic, ominous
- Primary Conflict: The five Mansfield sisters against the hostile, superstitious villagers of Little Nettlebed
- Pacing Style: Chronological slow burn that intensifies alongside the drought
- ISBN: 978-1250366382
- Pages: 240
- Book Structure: 25 numbered chapters, framed by an epigraph and closing author material
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The Hounding Summary: Full Story Deep Dive
Spoilers follow.
In June 1701, ferryman Pete Darling rows the five Mansfield sisters across the Thames toward Greater Nettlebed so they can dye their clothes black after their grandmother’s death. Anne, Elizabeth, Hester, Grace, and Mary answer his attempts at conversation with silence.
Feeling slighted, Pete lets the punt drift downstream to frighten them. Anne steps off into shoulder-deep water and wades ashore, publicly shaming him.
The river is unusually low for early summer. A heatwave settles over the parish, and schoolmaster Samuel Tubb discovers a ten-foot sturgeon trapped in the shallows.
Pete, Robin Wildgoose, and Tubb haul the fish ashore. When Hester and Mary try to roll it back into the water, Pete stamps on its head.
Thomas Mildmay arrives from Milton to help old Joseph Mansfield with the haymaking. At the Swan alehouse, Pete warns him that the sisters are strange and unyielding, but Thomas soon becomes spellbound by Anne.
Pete’s resentment hardens. He tells the barmaid Temperance Shirly that he watched all five sisters run on all fours and bark at twilight. She dismisses it as drunken nonsense and demands silence.
He breaks that promise the next day, telling his betrothed, Agnes Bullock, that the sisters played a demonic trick on him. Agnes carries the story to her wealthy father, Humphrey Bullock.
Gossip spreads through Little Nettlebed. Hens are found slaughtered, then livestock and wildlife across the fields. Villagers lock up every domestic dog to test whether the attacks continue.
Reverend Kennett visits the farm and declares the devil is possessing the girls. A trick of dappled light in the orchard makes Anne’s face briefly appear beastlike to both the vicar and Thomas.
Joseph summons Dr. John Friend from Oxford. During the examination, the sisters produce a synchronized howling chorus from their upstairs rooms.
Friend rules out the supernatural. He diagnoses a “hysteric disorder” caused by erratic animal spirits and orders the girls confined to their rooms.
Maidservants Connie and Amie, fearing contagion, abandon the household for London. Joseph barricades the doors himself.
Anne confronts him, arguing that they are being imprisoned for being independent girls in a hostile village. On his wedding morning, Pete drinks heavily and hallucinates an angel across the dry riverbank.
Joseph lets the sisters into the orchard while the village attends the wedding. Mocking barks disrupt the service, and Pete abandons Agnes at the altar to lead a mob toward the river.
Pete, Robin, and Robin’s brother Richard track the sisters and Thomas to a willow tree on the dry riverbed. Pete shows a bloody bite mark and accuses Anne of biting him.
Thomas punches Pete, but Pete overpowers him and begins strangling him on the ground. When Hester’s apple knife falls, Robin seizes it and stabs Pete three times in the back, killing him.
As the mob arrives, Thomas confesses to the murder, claiming he killed Pete out of love for Anne. He is bound and taken to Humphrey Bullock’s house to await execution.
Temperance, who has broken her lifelong sobriety under the strain, visits him in captivity. Thomas admits he is innocent and took the blame for Robin.
Temperance drops a sharp clam shell near his bound hands and leaves the window unlatched. Thomas cuts himself free and escapes.
That night, Joseph wakes to find his failing eyesight restored and all five bedrooms empty. From his window he sees five powerful dogs running alongside a golden-haired boy, leaping the garden wall into the wilderness.
Rain finally falls on the parched land. Joseph feels relief and gladness, knowing his granddaughters are free rather than trapped or broken.
Summary by Chapter
Spoilers ahead. This book contains 25 numbered chapters.
Chapter One: In June 1701, Pete Darling ferries the five Mansfield sisters across the Thames to dye their clothes black. Their silence offends him, so he lets the punt drift downstream. Anne wades ashore through shoulder-deep water, shaming him, and Pete returns to the alehouse noting how low the river has fallen.
Chapter Two: A heatwave grips Little Nettlebed while Temperance Shirly works the Swan in gloves to avoid touching ale. Villagers haul a ten-foot sturgeon from the shallows; Hester and Mary try to save it, and Pete stamps on its head. The black-clad sisters walk away angry.
Chapter Three: Farmhand Thomas Mildmay arrives from Milton to help with haymaking. Pete warns him at the alehouse that the sisters are rude and strange, but Thomas is immediately captivated by Anne. Hester tricks him into climbing down a well in search of a nonexistent kitten.
Chapter Four: Joseph wakes sensing an absence of morning dew and realises a drought is coming. Anne applies a herbal eyewash to his failing eyes, while Hester reads fortunes in the ashes and predicts Anne will be hunted. Later, the rotting remains of the sturgeon are dumped outside the garden gate.
Chapter Five: Pete ferries Joseph and Anne to the Swan, where Joseph confronts the publican over the dumped entrails. Pete goads Robin Wildgoose about the sisters, and Anne pointedly ignores him on the return trip. When she reluctantly touches Pete’s hand while disembarking, he is left burning with resentment.
Chapter Six: Robin attends a badger-baiting at the Swan to prove he fits in, and is pressured into kicking the dying animal. Walking home, he encounters Elizabeth and Anne and speaks to them harshly, imitating other men. Shortly afterwards he hears a human barking sound in the dark lane.
Chapter Seven: Joseph rests in the orchard, overhearing Hester and Grace whisper about a dark village incident. Elizabeth plucks every rose in the garden to distil eyewash for him while weeping. Six-year-old Mary, pretending to be a witch’s cat, warns that her older sisters are behaving strangely and that their distress is “not nothing.”
Chapter Eight: Thomas’s obsession with Anne deepens during the cherry harvest. He plays with Mary about “moon people” and catches Anne smiling at him. Watching her devour raw cherries with stained lips, he pledges silent devotion, and stops hiding his longing when she catches him staring.
Chapter Nine: At the riverbank, Pete tells Temperance he saw the five sisters turn into dogs and run on all fours. She dismisses it as drunken hallucination and demands he keep quiet. Back at the Swan, John agrees the story is foolishness, but Temperance senses a dangerous shift has begun.
Chapter Ten: Pete visits Agnes Bullock, discarding his wildflowers before entering, and tells her the sisters played a demonic trick on him. Agnes promises to tell her father. Pete convinces himself that exposing the girls is a pious duty, then watches women washing laundry in the shrinking river.
Chapter Eleven: The rumour spreads rapidly. Robin hears it from Martha Heathcote and stays sceptical, while Connie and Amie warn that girls have been executed as witches for less. At home, Robin finds all the family hens slaughtered and learns from Richard that Tubb has confirmed the story.
Chapter Twelve: Temperance attends a funeral where six pregnant women carry the coffin. She sees the sisters watched by boys who bark at them, then asks Reverend Kennett to stop Pete’s lies. Instead the vicar insists on investigating himself, and Temperance leaves the churchyard in despair at having made things worse.
Chapter Thirteen: The drought dries up the farm well as Hester starts fires with baptism spoons. Reverend Kennett visits Joseph and claims the girls are transforming into dogs; Joseph calls it superstition and orders him out. As the vicar leaves, dappled orchard light makes Anne’s face appear briefly beastlike to him and to Thomas.
Chapter Fourteen: Shaken, Thomas decides to return to Milton. At the Swan, Temperance serves him bread and cheese and reflects on Roman ruins found beneath a burned house. Realising the sisters have no protectors, Thomas abandons his plan and turns back toward the farm.
Chapter Fifteen: The Thames dries to stone, making Pete’s ferry useless. Drunk, he flatters young Richard into sharing village gossip. The next morning Humphrey Bullock warns him to stop drinking and drop the rumours before the wedding, but Pete remains convinced of his own righteousness.
Chapter Sixteen: Haymaking begins under a scorching sun. Walter mocks the sisters and Thomas defends them, revealing that Joseph has summoned a doctor from Oxford. Robin secretly watches Thomas and Anne hold hands and dreads what the village will make of it.
Chapter Seventeen: Dr. John Friend arrives to examine the sisters, who break into a joint howling chorus upstairs. He diagnoses an erratic “hysteric disorder” driven by irregular animal spirits and prescribes strict isolation. Thomas carries the exhausted girls to bed, relieved that possession was ruled out.
Chapter Eighteen: Joseph places heavy furniture outside the girls’ doors to enforce isolation, but Connie and Amie refuse to stay and leave for London. Anne confronts her grandfather, arguing that they are imprisoned simply for being independent girls.
Chapter Nineteen: Temperance stops speaking to John after he lets a drunk Pete back into the Swan. Richard reports five large dogs near the fields, and Tubb brings news of slaughtered animals across the hayfields. Overcome, Temperance licks spilled ale from her fingers and discovers a taste for it.
Chapter Twenty: On his wedding morning, Pete drinks and hallucinates a glowing angel. Martha Heathcote tells him every dog in the village has been locked up to test whether the killings stop. Convinced of divine protection, he marches to church through the moaning of caged dogs.
Chapter Twenty-One: Joseph suggests selling the farm and fleeing, but Anne refuses to be driven from her home. He lets the girls into the orchard during the wedding service. Mocking barks erupt outside the church, and Pete abandons his bride to lead an angry mob toward the dry river.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Pete, Robin, and Richard track the sisters and Thomas to a willow tree. Pete displays a bite mark and accuses Anne, and Thomas punches him. When Pete begins strangling Thomas, Robin grabs Hester’s fallen apple knife and stabs him three times in the back.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Hester wipes the bloody knife on her dress while Robin sobs. As the mob approaches chanting the sisters’ names, Thomas takes full blame for the killing, claiming he acted out of love for Anne. He is bound and led away to await execution.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Temperance drinks two pints at the empty Swan, breaking her lifelong sobriety. She visits the captive Thomas, who admits he is innocent and covered for Robin. She drops a sharp clam shell near his hands, leaves the window unlatched, and bids him godspeed.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Joseph learns Thomas has vanished, and Humphrey Bullock searches the farm without success. That night Joseph’s eyesight is restored, but all five bedrooms are empty. He watches five dogs run beside a golden-haired boy into the wild as rain finally falls.
Characters In This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Anne Mansfield | The eldest sister at 18, who leads the household and becomes the primary target of village hostility. |
| Elizabeth Mansfield | The second sister at 15, who dreams of Oxford and London and finer clothes. |
| Hester Mansfield | The third sister at 13, who resists feminine constraints and starts fires with baptism spoons. |
| Grace Mansfield | The fourth sister, around 11, who is anxious and pious. |
| Mary Mansfield | The youngest sister at 6, who pretends to be a cat and speaks cryptically. |
| Joseph Mansfield | The sisters’ widowed grandfather, a farmer losing his sight. |
| Pete Darling | The Thames ferryman who invents and spreads the rumour about the sisters. |
| Thomas Mildmay | A farmhand hired for haymaking who falls in love with Anne. |
| Robin Wildgoose | A gentle village youth who kills Pete Darling to save Thomas. |
| Richard Wildgoose | Robin’s younger brother, who repeats rumours and fuels the mob. |
| Temperance Shirly | Barmaid at the Swan who helps Thomas escape captivity. |
| John Shirly | Publican of the Swan alehouse and Temperance’s husband. |
| Reverend Kennett | The local clergyman who interprets the sisters’ behaviour as demonic possession. |
| Dr. John Friend | The Oxford physician who diagnoses the sisters with hysteric disorder. |
| Humphrey Bullock | A wealthy local merchant who demands order in the village. |
| Agnes Bullock | Humphrey’s daughter and Pete Darling’s betrothed. |
| Connie & Amie | Maidservants at the Mansfield farm who leave for London. |
| Samuel Tubb | The village schoolmaster who writes poetry and spreads gossip. |
| Martha Heathcote | The baker’s wife and a leading village gossiper. |
What Drives the Story
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| Mass Hysteria and Social Paranoia | Pete Darling’s claim spreads from alehouse to church to field within days. Villagers read crop failure, sick animals, and slaughtered livestock as evidence of the sisters’ malevolence. |
| Misogyny and the Fear of Female Independence | The Mansfield sisters refuse to be meek. Pete Darling, a man the narrator describes as hating women most of all, turns their silence into a supernatural accusation. |
| Masculinity and the Expectation of Violence | Robin is pushed to kick a dying badger at a baiting event. Richard repeats rumours to appear manly. Thomas takes a murder charge rather than let Robin be blamed. |
| Environmental Decay Mirroring Social Decay | The Thames dries to rock, the well fails, and the fields burn. Empathy in the village erodes at the same pace as the water. |
| Sisterly Solidarity and Isolation | The five sisters keep a private language and a united front. Anne cradles a weeping Elizabeth in silence; the household closes ranks against the parish. |
| Superstition Versus Rationalism | Reverend Kennett names the devil, Dr. Friend names animal spirits, and the villagers name witchcraft. All three explanations produce the same confinement. |
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Books Like The Hounding
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave — Set on a seventeenth-century Norwegian island after a storm kills its men, it follows a community of women targeted by religious suspicion and witch-hunting.
Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery by Brom — Colonial New England folk horror about a woman branded a witch by puritanical villagers who embraces a wild transformation.
Cackle by Rachel Harrison — A small-town story about gossip, female solidarity, and how nonconforming women are labelled monstrous.
The Year of the Witches by Alexis Henderson — A puritanical rural setting where patriarchal religious authority projects its paranoia onto young women.
Matrix by Lauren Groff — An isolated community of women defying male control, told in lyrical historical prose.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller — A dramatic account of how accusation and hysteria overtake a small community.
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent — Historical fiction set in rural isolation about a woman condemned by communal belief.
