Coram Boy

14-year-old Meshak is thought to be a simpleton but it is this traumastised boy's longing for love and security that leads him to save the life of one of the many illegitimate babies that his sinister father collects from desperate women, pretending that he will deliver them to the safety of the newly founded Coram Foundling Hospital. This baby, Aaron, really does become a Coram boy and the locket found on him is later to reveal his true identity.

Gavin depicts the brutal, underworld side of eighteenth-century society without pulling her punches. The reader flinches at the suffering of these abandoned children who are left to die or sold into servitude. At the same time the novel is a powerful family saga in which Gavin juxtaposes Meshak's tyrannical father with the tyrannical father of a young gentleman, Alexander, whose search for love and understanding is to result in an illegitimate child. Gavin has begun to tackle ambitious historical and cultural themes (cf her 'The Surya Trilogy') with increasing confidence. In this stunning new novel her characters are drawambitious historical and cultural themes (cf her 'The Surya Trilogy') with increasing confidence. In this stunning new novel her characters are drawn with a greater depth of psychological conviction while she also weaves together the threads of her richly layered story to immerse the reader in the sights, smells and mind set of Hogarth's world.