Urn Burial | Setting

Urn Burial Setting

Westall has set Urn Burial in the Pennine chain of northern England, near the Scottish border. The fell country is an isolated land of rain, prehistoric ruins, and heather. The sheep that run loose on the steep hills are still a major source of income, and shepherding is a respected profession. Life remains rather primitive on the fells, but the homes have electricity and running water and the shepherds reach their flocks on motorbikes. Ralph Edwards, the book's seventeen-year-old protagonist, may live a life full of sheep dipping, herding, and hard work, but he has seen the movie Star Wars. Westall does not dwell overlong on the magnificent landscape in which his story takes place, but his deft use of just the right detail—lonely cairns on the felltops, thick hedges along the roads—conveys a strong sense of a world at once familiar and mysterious, at once contemporary and ancient.