When Elin Pugh’s life in London crumbles, she returns to the Welsh mountains of her childhood to care for Anwen Jones, the enigmatic artist who once filled her young heart with dreams of creativity and freedom.

Anwen lives alone in a ramshackle cottage high in the hills, surrounded by cats and decades of dust-covered paintings. Fiercely independent and famously difficult, she’s spent years driving away visitors with her sharp tongue and signs warning trespassers to ‘Go Away’. But as Elin settles into life in the shadow of the mountains, she discovers that beneath Anwen’s prickly exterior lies a woman with an extraordinary story to tell.

Helping the ailing artist catalogue a lifetime of work, Elin begins to uncover long-buried secrets about her own past that her mother has kept hidden for over thirty years. Soon she discovers that her journey home was about more than escaping – it was about finding out who she really is, rediscovering the life-changing joy of creativity and learning where she truly belongs.

A sweeping story of love, loss and the wonder of the natural world, The Cottage in the Clouds explores how creativity and unexpected bonds can help us to heal and find our way back to ourselves.