The airless cottage stifles me, and I cannot breathe. The glass reveals
another world, but it entombs me. I am captive, but I have seen the
outside. It is November 1826 and I am thirty-one years old... There is a
storm brewing.
New Year 1851 Rector James Coyte arrives at his bleak Suffolk
destination. Full of apprehension, he expects his first post to be
provincial and unchallenging.
But Polstead is a village with a secret. A young woman murdered in a
frenzied attack, then buried in a shallow grave in The Red Barn. She was
just twenty-seven, and only six weeks before birthed an illegitimate
baby.
Based on true events which shocked the nineteenth century Britain, The
Red Barn is set in 1851 when Ann Marten, nearing the end of her life,
reveals the story to the novice Rector. Through their meetings, the
truth of the murder is gradually uncovered to its shocking climax.