Trifolium Books UK

"Written with passion … and an extraordinarily vivid sense of place…” Sarah Johnson: Reading the Past

A vivid and scholarly portrait of England in the reign of Charles II. The joy of the Restoration is a fading memory, and conflicts of land ownership and religious toleration are raging. The story is set on the Furness Peninsula in Northern England, now part of Cumbria, and concerns how ordinary folks survive, live and love in times of political upheaval and social conflict.

People turned out of their homes; others living rich beyond the dreams of the dispossessed. Science struggling with superstition; celebrity and royalty parading in a public sexual carnival.

Of the two men in Rosamund Halistan’s life, one is a fellow scholar of the occult, the other a wild hedonist with tragic memories. She suspects both of them of attempts on her brother’s life and designs on her body and land.

It’s harder to find a safe path through the thickets of treason and bigotry than through the rip-tides and quicksands, solid routes and sanctuary in the sands of Morecambe Bay.