Kirjahaku

Young Finley Bathbourne, distraught by his father's transportation to New South Wales on a dubious charge of poaching, vows to rescue and return him to British shores. A sea Journey aboard a prison ship, taking more than 12 months, introduces the callow youth to the adult pleasures of Rio de Janeiro's nightlife and the terrifying thunderous seas of the roaring forties transforming him, at just 16 years of age, from adolescence to manhood. The return journey, via India and Cape Town, is fraught with impediment and sadness. His only reward is his father's instruction to seek the meaning of clearwater from his mother on his return to England. However, during his absence Colonel Clewer, who was responsible for his father's imprisonment, instructs the watchman to arrest Finley on his arrival back in the county. Gaining sanctuary in the local church he thwarts the colonel's intentions but exposes some deep secrets which have significant effects on his future.

James West, a farm labourer in 1890's Worcestershire receives a letter informing him that his sister Emma is dying. He travels to London to comfort her in her final days. Emma is anxious to unburden herself to her brother before she dies about events that occurred more than forty years before. The family was broken up due to the death of the father; the punitive poor laws of the time compelled the destitute mother to remarry and move to a distant parish. Emma promises her mother to do everything she can to keep the family together. Working on a farm as a live-in servant with her younger sister Eliza, she made a secret pact with the master of the farm allowing her to regularly visit George,the youngest member of the family. The agreement was honoured. But she paid a heavy price. The unholy pact involved favours of a sexual nature and all those whose lives it touched experienced consequences which were good and bad or even deadly when repercussions surfaced in the distant Americas many years later.