I hadn't realised that this was the second book of a trilogy. However, I think it stands well enough alone. It's set in a poor Turkish village, at the start of a bitter winter. This is a world where an old woman can make a vow never to speak to another living soul, and stick solemnly to it, or where a beggar can speak incoherent words which are taken for prophecy.

The villagers have been unable to harvest enough cotton in the summer to pay off their debts to the town shopkeeper, and are terrified by his unforgiving reputation (the story goes that the last time a village couldn't pay their debts, he arrived with his men and took everything of value, down to the drawers the women were wearing). They make all sort of preparations for his visit... but he does not come. This puts the village into such a pitch of terrified hysteria that all sorts of coincidences start to look like portents, and all of a sudden, one of the villagers - a man called Tashbash - is being hailed as a man with holy powers who will deliver them from their troubles. Tashbash himself doesn't want to have anything to do with this. But he happens to be a bitter enemy of the town's headman, who takes the whole thing as a plot against him - will Tashbash be able to extricate himself?

This was an interesting story, with wonderful descriptions of village life and the surrounding mountains. It's a deceptively light read, which I enjoyed, although the deliberate folkloric simplicity of the style is not really my thing. ( )