The Somerset Tsunami

Fortune Sharpe is independent, outspoken – and she longs to go to sea. These are dangerous characteristics at a time when it is better, as a girl, to avoid undue attention. There are witch hunts abroad – and when a freak storm – a tsunami strikes the Somerset coat – scapegoats are looked for….

Emma Carroll has established herself as an author who creates engaging characters and plots that bring the past alive. Centred on real events they involve young people who have agency and step off the page to meet their readers. This is the way to ensure that history is not seen as dead and dusted; it may be the past, but emotions, situations, ideas were as important and pressing as they are today. This, her latest novel, is no exception. Fortune Sharpe is a character who impresses from the moment we meet her. Through her we encounter the attitudes and prejudices of the seventeenth century – but also the believable and universal resilience of girls – and boys. We are drawn into domestic crises, the cruelties that were – and still are – inflicted on those who are seen as different and we learn about a little piece of history that will amaze – a real tsunami on the coast of England! Attractively packaged and related in an easy contemporary style that will keep the pages turning this is another novel by this author to recommend and to stock.