The Ferry of Souls

Introduction by Johnny Mains
Cover art: Souls on the Banks of the Acheron by Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl (1898)

The Ferry of Souls (1927) is a strange and beguiling book: the title story drifts over the reader like a fever dream. A new apprentice is shown the ropes by an ageing ferryman, and the ghostly crossing he foretells leads the lad to think the old man is losing his mind. Events soon prove the old man’s wisdom should not have been dismissed so lightly. ‘The Were-Wolf’ is a more explicit horror tale, and others are poetic and beautifully composed.

One review of Waysides & Byways (1928), the sequel to The Ferry of Souls, claimed ‘it is seldom we get pure ethics in pure literature, but I think that Mr Salmon gives us both . . . this is a beautiful book’. ‘The Doctor’ features the doctor and vicar of a rural parish, friends and colleagues who disagree about religion versus science. One evening they are together at the fireside as a storm rages outside. The vicar experiences a strong presentiment that the doctor’s skills are needed, and persuades him to venture out into the night. There is a strong thread of spiritual questioning in Salmon’s fiction, which can be seen as a reaction to the horrors of World War One.

This new book collects both volumes of stories. Salmon’s fiction is far too good to be forgotten.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Johnny Mains
• The Ferry of Souls: ‘The Ferry of Souls’
• A Garden of Dreams
• The Picture: A Tale of a Cornish Village
• The Sea Child
• The Gods in Exile
• The Ship of Desire
• The Were-Wolf
• The Moorland Stream
• The Payment
• Mirage
• Aphrodite
• The Place of Haunting Sorrows
• Autumn
• The Child in the Fields
• The Monk’s Vigil
• A Proselyte
• The Return I
• The Return II
• Two Poems: , ‘Pleading’
• Circe
• Waysides & Byways: Studies of Loneliness
• I. The Old Road’
• II. The Dreamer
• III The Lake
• IV. The Wind on the Heath
• V. The Light
• VI. The Dancing-Floor
• VII. On the River
• VIII. A Way of Escape
• Father Paul
• The Novice
• The Musician
• False Dawn
• A Cameron
• For the Fallen: A Sketch in Dialogue
• The Beasts that Perish
• The Doctor
• “They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships”
• Additional Stories:
• Calling the Dead
• The Horror
• A.L. Salmon: A Bibliography

Limited hardcover