Mad Blood Stirring
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
'Wonderful. Told with style, pace, character, texture, and tension’ - Lee Child
1815: The war is over but for the inmates at Dartmoor Prison, peace - like home - is still a long way away.
On the eve of the year 1815, the captured sailors of the Eagle arrive at Dartmoor prison; bedraggled, exhausted, sustained only by a rumour heard along the way.
Joe Hill thought he’d left the conflict behind but it is clear there is a different type of battle here. As he announces the news of the end of the war, the guards bristle and the inmates stir. The powder keg was fixed to blow and Joe has just lit the fuse.
Elizabeth Shortland, the Governor’s wife, looks out at the unsettled crowd. The peace means the end is near, that she needn’t be here for ever. But suddenly, she cannot bear the thought of leaving.
Inspired by true events, Mad Blood Stirring is a story of hope and freedom, of loss and suffering. It is a story about how sometimes, in our darkest hour, it can be the most unlikely of things that see us through.
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'Wonderful - a story I never heard before, told with style, pace, character, texture, and tension ... bliss.' Lee Child
'Bristling with energy, written with passion, Mad Blood Stirring is a joy to read.' John Boyne
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Mayo's first novel for adults (after the children's book Itch), a grueling work of historical fiction, the War of 1812 is over, but, because the treaty has yet to be ratified by Congress, captured American sailors continue to rot at Dartmoor Prison in England. Into this inhospitable environment comes Joe Hill, a young American sailor who is befriended in prison by Habs Snow, an educated black sailor. The prison is segregated; Joe is assigned to Block Seven while Habs resides in Block Four. Ruling Block Four is the fearsome King Dick, who turns out to have a soft spot for the theater. His idea is to entertain his fellow prisoners by staging a production of Romeo and Juliet starring Habs as Romeo and Joe as Juliet. The production itself is beset by numerous disruptions: an outbreak of smallpox, riots, violence between rival prison gangs, escape attempts, insurrection, and that fateful stage kiss between the two leads. Like Thomas Keneally's The Playmaker, this novel, based on historical record, stirringly dramatizes how theater, stories, and art can be used as a vehicle of uplift in the midst of the most trying, dehumanizing circumstances. Mayo has created a searing portrait of humanity at its most brutal and tender.
