About Speck

The novel is a work of speculative fiction set in rural England just after the first world war. The main characters are crows.

Speck is the young male storyteller of the Southwood flock, grandson of the flock leader and direct descendent of the crow god Akka. The flock lives by a strict male-dominated fundamentalist code, but disease and starvation threaten the future of the crows.

When Speck reinterprets the flock’s founding legend he is censured and banned from storytelling. He wants only to regain his status and mate with Slender. His sister Green Eyes defies the ban on females foraging in the forest and is banished to the Northwood flock. Speck flies there and finds a meritocracy where some of the best foragers are female and the flock has survived by adopting progressive ideas.

With a new set of skills Speck returns to win Slender and regain his status in the flock. He faces many challenges; the intransigence of the leadership and his own family, the dominance of his older brother Titus, his fixation on Slender, and the growing violence of Scar Man, the farmer whose land borders the flock’s roosting tree. Change does not come easily to Southwood and Speck must be prepared to risk all to save the flock.

Speck is a richly imagined allegorical fable in the tradition of Animal Farm by George Orwell or Watership Down by Richard Adams. Like Casiopea Tun in Gods of Jade and Sorrow by Silvia Moreno Garcia, Speck begins a journey that must end in confrontation, a confrontation and will forever change the Southwood flock.