Pointing Woman

Autumn, 1822.

Tildy has found employment as nurse to the aged mother of Charles Burke Bromley.

Safe and sheltered with baby Davy, she nevertheless feels compelled to leave her haven after she turns down Bromley's offer of marriage.

Charles is financially secure, kind and decent but physically repulsive.

To Tildy, he is merely another man who anticipates affection in return for kindness towards her.

Marrying him would be an arrangement of convenience and this is not the life that Tildy has planned for herself. All that matters to her is Davy and her independence.

Back in the outside world, Tildy finds herself returning to the house of Mother Readman, the only safe place she has ever really known despite its rough reputation.

Mother Readman is a fierce but fair woman who holds Tildy in high regard and makes it her business to look out for the young woman. Despite their differences, the pair are firm friends.

Tildy soon finds work in the needle trade - her job is arduous and ill-paid but is sufficient to buy her some time and pay for her lodgings.

Then her absent husband Tom Crawford erupts back into her life.

Horrified, Tildy refuses to live with him again. The vicious treatment he inflicted upon her is impossible to forget.

But Crawford is a desperate man and will stop at nothing to force her hand - not even child-snatching ...

Searching for Davy and in desperate need of money to plead her case, Tildy takes well-paid work as a 'pointer', grinding needles, but the male pointers will not let go of their supremacy without struggle.

At home, she takes a stand to reclaim her child, despite law and order being seemingly united against her.

Tildy must fight for her right to be heard as a young mother battling against her savage husband...

Tildy: Pointing Woman is a vivid portrayal of a woman's struggle for independence in nineteenth century England. It is the latest instalment in Sara Fraser's historical fiction saga.

Sara Fraser is the pen-name of marine commando and foreign legionnaire Roy Clews. Fraser is the author of The Surgeon's Apprentice, Til Death Do us Part and The Healing Nightfall , among many others. Fraser has written a number of mysteries as well as a number of novels influenced by a life of travel and work all over the world.


Genre: Literary Fiction