Review: Well-researched page-turning novel - Review Copy
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 31, 2012
This is a well-researched historical novel based on true facts and life such as it was for the poorer in 1700s England, and of those who sought a better life from within the American colonies. The author's notes at end of book reveal the extent of research undertaken by Ms Butler to provide a well-informed and accurate picture of the era depicted.Two pages in and the heroine Herodias, had my full attention. A sharp-witted young miss with equally sharp tongue, and being the daughter of a tenanted smallholder in Devonshire her life is tough but endurable. Like all young things she has dreams of a better life and flirts a little with someone whom she hopes might provide escape from absolute drudgery. Unfortunately plague comes to Devon and events unfold which see her sent to London as a serving wench to her aunt, and life for Herodias becomes nowt better than that of a slave.Whilst clinging to her dreams in hope of evading poverty and servitude, a young man enters her life and she believes God has answered her prayers. But to marry an unknown and take sail for the America's, Herodias has no idea she has sealed a fate no woman would willingly step into eyes wide open. Life such as it is for female settlers all around her is nothing compared to the cruel twisted existence she is forced to suffer from her marriage to John Hicks. What transpires in her life is subject to strict Puritanical beliefs, but can evil within be overcome or must she succumb to the inevitable that one mistake made when barely fourteen years of age may see her dead at the hands of the man she saw as her escape to a new and wonderful life?