The Penny Heart (titled A Taste for Nightshade in the US)
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The Penny Heart is set in the 1790s in the north of England, Australia and New Zealand. Like An Appetite for Violets, it is about a cook, but this time a former Botany Bay convict who is unwittingly employed by a naïve young wife. Deceit and double-crossing follow, uncovering a tale of revenge that culminates in murder.
When I got my publishing deal I was house-swapping my way across the Antipodes and living in a tiny town called Whakatane on the East Cape of New Zealand. My agent warned me I needed to have an idea for a second book ready, so I asked myself what I was equipped to write in a beautiful solitude that lacked a museum or specialist library. I decided I had my memories and identity from northern Britain and also lots of powerful Antipodean history about castaways and convicts.
When I got my publishing deal I was house-swapping my way across the Antipodes and living in a tiny town called Whakatane on the East Cape of New Zealand. My agent warned me I needed to have an idea for a second book ready, so I asked myself what I was equipped to write in a beautiful solitude that lacked a museum or specialist library. I decided I had my memories and identity from northern Britain and also lots of powerful Antipodean history about castaways and convicts.
18th century convict tokens depicting a woman with a barrow of fruit and a woman with hearts, a dove and an anchor of hope
Penny Heart convict tokens were copper English pennies smoothed and engraved with messages by convicts doomed never to see their families or homeland again. Created when convicts were largely voiceless and believed to lack all tender feelings, these crude keepsakes commemorate desperate people about to embark on the Georgian equivalent of a trip to the moon. Though the most usual emotion expressed is pain at separation, anger and defiance are also found in a rich selection of verses and mottoes.
In The Penny Heart, Mary, a sharp-witted confidence trickster, has a penny token engraved at Newgate prison with a rhyme that is part promise, part threat:
In The Penny Heart, Mary, a sharp-witted confidence trickster, has a penny token engraved at Newgate prison with a rhyme that is part promise, part threat:
Though chains hold me fast,
As the years pass away,
I swear on this heart
To find you one day
As the years pass away,
I swear on this heart
To find you one day
Writing about this journey to the wild Antipodes and back again to Britain, was my memorial to those who had been shipped to 'the ends of the earth'. Prompted by fear of extinction, they engraved their messages in their own authentic voices, a plea from the past to remember them today.
Find out more about:
GRACE
MARY
READING GROUP QUESTIONS
Find out more about:
GRACE
MARY
READING GROUP QUESTIONS