In the face of the imminent threat of his being buried with a stake in his heart at a crossroads outside town, Myrtle makes desperate attempts to appeal to the men in charge in the only ways she knows how-using her good looks and manipulating their egos. If the Reverend’s death is ruled a suicide, the family will be destitute. Over the next few days, it is increasingly assumed that his death was a suicide and so the family are unable to bury him in hallowed ground. She falls asleep later, thrilled that she has been able to be the dutiful, appreciated daughter she has always wanted to be, only to wake the next day to the news that her father has been found dead. One night, Faith’s father asks for her help in a very unlikely show of affection and need, and it is clear to Faith that he is indeed hiding something of great importance. Tensions seem to be escalating faster than Faith can attempt to decipher what is going on around her family.

The staff employed at their home resent them, the ladies of Vane society will not accept them, and the other scientists at the dig are not particularly pleased with the rumours that follow the Reverend to the island-rumours that probably caused his flight to Vane in the first place.

The Reverend seems to be harbouring secrets and is paranoid about anyone on his property, setting dangerous traps for trespassers, one of which almost takes the leg off a young boy. Very soon it is clear that the family is unpopular on the island and the island isn’t very popular with them either-Faith’s mother Myrtle’s attitude makes it clear that she considers them to be high society city folk who are slumming it in Vane. But because The Lie Tree is a Frances Hardinge novel, the sense of impending doom is heavy and present right from the very moody start. Faith, her parents, her uncle Miles, and her younger brother Howard (the last and only surviving son in a line of stillbirths and early deaths), arrive at Vane expecting to be welcomed. Her father, the Reverend Erasmus Sunderly, is a natural scientist and has been invited to Vane to participate in a dig on the island, though the sudden urgency with which they leave London is suspicious at the very least. Faith doesn’t quite understand why her family has had to abruptly leave their home for a small island in the English Channel.

The lie tree book summary