Sign-In
Cart
This Still Hearth
Paperback
General FictionHistorical Fiction
ISBN13: 9781923216693
Publisher: Charlotte Chidell
Published: Mar 30 2025
Pages: 410
Weight: 2.10
Height: 1.11 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
Katherine Young, born into a family of master mariners, leaves her East London home in Regency England to travel to distant St Helena. She meets Anthony Beale at a Plantation House ball. They marry in June 1814.
For the Europeans, the South Atlantic Island is a veritable Garden of Eden, remote from world affairs and run with soldier-like precision under the direction of the Honourable East India Company. The men are employed in a civilian or military capacity and receive generous rewards. The women spend time in the congenial company of friends and family.
All is not well in Paradise. Introduced goats and wild boar run wild and have destroyed large swathes of native vegetation. Ineffective farming practices ensure the islanders are dependent on imported foodstuffs. Underemployed drunken soldiers occupy scarce hospital beds. Hard labour is undertaken by Chinese imported workers or slaves whose lives are wretched. The catalyst, when it comes, is unexpected. Individual and organisational responses create an irrevocable ripple effect. The Beales do not remain unscathed.
Employing an epistolary narrative style and drawing inspiration from Katherine's own writing, This Still Hearth uses metaphors and poetry to recreate Katherine Beale's unique story in a biographical novel that's sure to keep you engaged until the very last page.
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Agee, Joel
Musil, Robert
Paperback
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Baughman, Judith
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paperback