Author Description

1752. As winter approaches, two guilty secrets drive seventeen-year-old Agnes Trussel to run away from her home in rural Sussex. Pregnant with an unwanted child and carrying stolen coins, she is shocked by the squalor and poverty of London. She finds work as an assistant to John Blacklock, a firework maker, and also meets Cornelius Soul, seller of gunpowder. Why does Blacklock so vehemently disapprove of Mr Soul - and what is Blacklock hiding from her? Her own secret is becoming harder to conceal, and caught between her crime and her condition it appears that ruin must be inevitable...