The Bastard Boy

Ned Gudgeon wakes to find himself in a cell. He has no idea where he is or how he came to be there, but - seeing pen and paper - he begins to write ...What follows is Ned's remarkable story - the story of his quest for his missing nephew, taking him from the corrupt and teeming slaving port of Bristol to the turmoil of the colonies on the brink of revolution. What is the mystery of the bastard boy? Where is he? And why do so many people seem bent on keeping Ned from finding him? To discover the answers, Ned embarks on a perilous journey that brings him danger, betrayal and a tender and unexpected romance - confronting, on the way, the violent contradictions of revolutionary America, and his own most cherished ideas about property and slavery, honour and treachery, savagery and civilization. Finally, in a startling climax, he learns the extraordinary truth about 'the bastard boy'. Through his brilliant and wholly authentic evocation of the period and its language, James Wilson once again proves himself to be one of the most ambitious and virtuoso writers of historical fiction at work today.