Book description
New York, late 1840s, and in the wild, noisy, brash and beautiful
circus of Silas P. Swift a shadowy, mesmeric woman entrances crowds
because she can unlock the secrets of troubled minds. Above them all her
daughter sweeps and soars: acrobat and tightrope-walker. People cannot
take their eyes from the mysterious woman in the Big Top who can help so
many others - but she cannot unlock dark, literally unspeakable,
memories of her own. In London memories fester in the mind of an old and
venomous duke of the realm. He plots, with an unscrupulous lawyer (and a
huge financial reward) against the mother and the daughter: to kill one,
and to abduct the other and bring her across the Atlantic to him: She is
mine. The actress and mesmerist Cordelia Preston and her daughter
Gwenlliam live with their unusual family in the exciting new city among
exciting new ideas: the telegraph, the daguerrotype, anaesthesia,
table-tapping. And among the dangerous street-gangs of New York also,
whose raw violence meets Cordelia and Gwenlliam and those that they
love, with unexpected results. Barbara Ewing is a New Zealand-born
actress and author who lives in London. She has a university degree in
English and Maori and won the Bancroft Gold Medal at the Royal Academy
of Dramatic Art.
