Things Found on the Mountain Brand New

Farmer’s daughter Beth is a child of nature, utterly at one with the rugged landscape on which she tends the farm’s sheep, in a remote valley in the Black Mountains. But change is coming. The modern world arrives with the construction of a reservoir in a neighbouring valley. Part of the mountain is taken away to build the dam; there are people, machinery, noise. Then the farms are emptied of their young men by the First World War, including Beth’s beloved brother Daniel, who goes missing in action. Her mother turns to religion, her father falls silent.Beth takes to the mountain, and a solitude interrupted by the arrival of a colony of artists led by the charismatic Eric Gill. And among them is Gill’s apprentice, Gabriel. When the colony moves on, Beth faces a terrible choice: can she leave the Mountain to be with Gabriel?Things Found on the Mountain is a Hardyesque coming of age story. At its heart is the dramatic landscape, which, like Beth, suffers an end to innocence. This lyrically written novel, reminiscent of Sarah Hall, marks the arrival of an appealing new voice in fiction.

Diana Powell was born in Llanelli and 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.