Just Kernow
DOUBLE SIGNED LTD ED OUT NOW
Full colour and b/w illustrations throughout
Hardback World 1st/1st - Pub 01/10/2025 - Limited to 100 copies
A Novel of Cornwall in 12 Tall Tales
Twelve university friends meet up every year on Midsummer Night’s Eve at a secret beach near Tintagel, Cornwall. They sit in a circle around a campfire, sharing the ups and downs of their lives. Good times are always had, but they’re tinged with sadness. They leave a gap in the circle for the thirteenth friend who, in thirty years, has never joined them. Perhaps this year will be different?
It is. But not in the way they’d hoped. As they’re arguing over how the pasty got its crimp, an ancient giant of a man, covered in bird feathers, plonks himself into the gap and commands them to be silent as he sets the record straight. He tells them the tales of Cornwall that no one yet knows, how it shaped the world and might yet save it. As the night wears on, and stories shapeshift fantasy and fact, the friends must question everything they thought they knew to be true - about their past, their future, and each other.
Just Kernow is a novel in twelve tall stories: eleven untold tales of Cornwall bound by the twelfth no one realises is happening - the fate of the friends sitting on the beach.
“Sacred truths are simply held, but they’re so complicated in origin. Fact or fantasy, they rely on the intensity of our passion to carry them to action, then secure them in our memories. We share them, espouse them. We are persuaded, then we persuade. And the truth grows, no matter how barren the ground from which it initially sprouted.”
Illustrated by Cornish Artists Pamela Dearing & Nicky Pilcher
How it started
The idea for the book originally came from a 'What if?' What if we wrote a Just So Stories for Cornwall? We had a single story title that kept nagging at us: How the Pasty Got its Crimp. But as we worked together on it, the project grew from a simple short story collection into a novel that explores Cornish identity, mythology, history and, ultimately, who owns the truth?