Calcutta, 1857. A mute, scarred woman is carried through the streets on a pallet. The lone survivor, they whisper, of the horrors in the bibighar.
Her name is Annie Meade. And she must find her way home.
The following year, veiled in widow's weeds, Annie steps back onto English soil to reclaim the son she has not held for eleven years .But outside the walls of his Shrewsbury school she falters. How can a broken woman, her face still marked by a bayonet's slash, present herself to a boy who barely remembers her?
An unexpected letter offers refuge. At Knightwych Hall, the country seat of a distant relation, Annie is drawn into a household seething beneath its polished surface. Here, shadows assemble round every corner. Nothing is quite as it seems, least of all the residents who hold close the mansion's cruel secret.
Who to trust in a world full of deception? When your mind is bombarded by nightmarish flashbacks? This is the daunting challenge Annie must overcome if she is ever to find happiness with her boy.
Anchored in Annie's own luminous journal, Annie Meadeis a richly imagined Victorian novel of trauma, survival, hope and grace.
