Description
Literature Works welcome the award-winning novelist Kim Sherwood to for a reading and Q & A about her latest novel A Wild & True Relation. Combining smuggling and literary history, the novel is a perfect fit for our Custom House venue and this event will be kicking off the Quayside’s first Heritage Harbour Festival (28 May).
A Wild & True Relation opens during the Great Storm of 1703, as smuggler Tom West confronts his lover Grace for betraying him to the Revenue. Leaving Grace’s cottage in flames, he takes her orphaned daughter Molly on board ship disguised as a boy to join his crew. But Molly, or Orlando as she must call herself, will grow up to outshine all the men of Tom’s company and seek revenge – and a legacy – all of her own.
Woven into Molly’s story are the writers – from Celia Fiennes to Hester Thrale to George Eliot – who are transfixed by her myth and who, over three centuries, come together to solve the mystery of her life. With extraordinary verve and chutzpah, Sherwood remakes the eighteenth century Heroical novel and celebrates women’s writing and women’s roles throughout history.