Sign-In
Cart
Molly and the Spatterdasher: An Immigration Odyssey and Disaster at Sea A Novel Inspired by Family Lore
Paperback
Mystery & ThrillerRomanceGeneral Fiction
ISBN13: 9781977254351
Publisher: Outskirts Pr
Published: Feb 22 2023
Pages: 194
Weight: 0.64
Height: 0.45 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A Novel Based on Family Lore
Set in the mid-1800s, A Gripping Tale of Desperation, Disaster, and Determination
It's 1844 in Swansea, a grimy industrial town in South Wales dominated by copper smelters. John Gibson, destitute and desperate, has just turned eighteen and he's drunk, at the mercy of a recruiter who signs him to a twenty-year stint in the British Army. Sober, hungover, and frightened, he runs away, across the Bristol Channel to Tiverton, in Devonshire, England, where he changes his name to Taylor and is taken on as an apprentice to become a cordwainer, a shoemaker. He falls in love with Molly Lake, his boss's comely, smart, and feisty seventeen-year-old daughter.
The young couple marry and begin a family. But life is brutally harsh, and they make plans to immigrate to America. John travels ahead to find work and sends money for Molly and the children to join him. But mid-Atlantic, her ship is plagued by deadly disease and torn apart by a raging storm. A passing steamship sees the burning wreck and watches in horror as it sinks into the sea. They report all were lost.
The story is based on family lore set out in a letter written by a beloved aunt forty years ago, years before the invention of the internet and genealogy search engines. What she wrote was based on what she'd heard over the years, with lots of guesses and uncertainties-as much mythology as history. But the story she told was a gripper--tracing the uncertain origins of John William Gibson Taylor and Mary Lake, their romance and marriage, the dire challenges they faced in poverty-stricken Victorian England, and their desperate and dangerous flight to America.
Also from
Taylor, Robert J.
WHAT'S THE MEANING OF LIFE? And Other Easily Answered Questions: Thoughts on Life's Big Mysteries
Taylor, Robert J.
Paperback
The Laws of Small Projects: Life Lessons Learned While Waiting for My Thumbnail to Grow Back
Taylor, Robert J.
Paperback
Hardship Post: With Terrorism on the Rise and His Marriage on the Ropes, an American Moves to Pakistan to Work for the Aga Khan
Taylor, Robert J.
Paperback
Also in
Romance
That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf (Mead Mishaps, Book 2)
Kimberly Lemming
Paperback
Sabine's Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Concludes
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover