It is 1920 and the beautiful village of Yegen, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, awakens to a new year and two events that are to change the pueblo for ever: the birth of Encarnita, a beautiful dark-eyed girl; and the arrival of the British writer Gerald Brenan and his string of artistic and literary visitors, including Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington.

Growing up in Yegen, and taught English by Brenan, the beautiful Encarnita longs for the world outside the small pueblo - the stories Brenan and his friends tell her spark her imagination. And so begins her long journey, from the Sierra to Edinburgh, where eighty years after her birth, she will have one last story to tell. Exquisitely written, Encarnita's Journey is a tale as beautiful as its Spanish setting, with touches of true insight into the lives of its literati cast and dark-eyed heroine.