Manfred walks alone through a snowy valley, surrounded by his memories, on a pilgrimage of sorts to his childhood home. He’s been estranged from his brother Sebastian for decades, ever since their bitter feud over the love of a woman and the inheritance of the family farm.

Twelve Nights transports us to the wintry depths of Europe’s Black Forest, through the stillness of the snow-covered hills, the dense woods, the cold and mist, in those dark, wild days between Christmas and Epiphany. These nights are a time of tradition and superstition, of tales told around the local innkeeper’s table of marauding spirits, as tangible as the ghosts of Manfred’s past. But Epiphany, the twelfth night, promises new beginnings, and a hope of reconciliation at last.

Twelve Nights is a hymn to the winter landscape and the power of storytelling, a beautiful novella of the natural world and our place in it, and a perfect holiday read.