In the Silence of Time, Vol. 1

Ireland, 1751. Sixteen-year-old Alexander Regan wants a life. Fed up with his thankless toil on a pig farm near Cork, he sets out on foot to search for a purpose, for something to believe in, something to live for. Dublin beckons; so does God. London, 1745. Jacob Crowan, apprentice cobbler, is inspired by his stepmother’s secret activities. He discovers another way of living – dangerous, but lucrative and satisfying. Joining forces with like-minded Edgar Foxley, he establishes a charitable school for young ladies in an idyllic spot on the Yorkshire coast. But the school is not the benign institution it masquerades as, and the lives of the innocents who find themselves there are all under threat. Yorkshire, 1749. A child, Catherine, is born to Alder and Nara. On the face of it, Kate Swithenbank is an ordinary little girl, but she’s not what she seems to be. Self-realisation comes only with the passage of years, and the little miracles she could work as a child become ever more dreadful. The lives of these three are bound together in a tale of adventure, hope, greed, exploitation, obsession and love, populated with a cast of hundreds, and told against the backdrop of eighteenth-century Yorkshire, Ireland and London. Something is coming to crush the darkness. And her name is Kate.

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