The Ballad of Seth and Eliza

A tender and funny novel about a family on the brink—the ex-folk-queen Eliza, her put-upon husband Seth, three special kids, a dying grandmother, an aunt returning from exile, a few sheep—and their attempts to fall back in love with one another

One rain-lashed night, Eliza, a fading folk music legend, strides out across the North York Moors with her life savings in a rucksack. She has a plan. But when she wakes the next morning, severely hungover, she can’t remember what it was. Or where the gold is now. 

Husband Seth is holding the family farm together. He’s been at it for twenty years: looking after their three children, his ailing mother and the family’s herd of goats, while absorbing whatever Eliza throws at him. But everbody’s got a breaking point.

Throw in a long-lost sister, a best friend going off the rails and a feud with the village’s dodgiest family – and Seth and Eliza have their hands full. It’s possible the lost gold might save them. That is, if their own buried secrets don’t sink them first.

The Ballad of Seth and Eliza is a big-hearted family saga. Adrian Edmondson’s novel shows us how the greatest love songs are never about easy love. And nor, it turns out, is the greatest life.