Charged with the brutal murder of two men, Agnes Magnusdóttir has been removed to her homeland's farthest reaches, to an isolated farm in northern Iceland, to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family on the farm at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. As the winter months pass and Agnes's death looms closer, the farmer's wife and daughters learn there is another side to the sensational tale they've heard--but will their new knowledge be enough to save Agnes?

Hannah Kent makes real the saga of a doomed young woman who in the early nineteenth century became the last person to be publicly beheaded in Iceland. Rich with lyricism and startling in its revelations, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place as it poses a heartbreaking question: How can one woman hope to endure when her life depends on the stories told by others?