The Penny Heart

Author/Guide: Martine Bailey

Why a Booktrail?

1787 – 1796: A dark novel with a sprinkling of cooking, trickery and revenge

ISBN: 978-1444769869
Genre: Historical, Mystery

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What you need to know before your trail

Manchester

Mary Jebb, 19, is transported to Australia’s penal colony of Botany Bay for seven years. The punishment is harsh as it was a simple confidence trick which has brought her here. Mary however knows the men who put her here and so she vow revenge. She sends two penny hearts, two pennies with messages engraved on them to those responsible and vows revenge.
Lancashire

Grace Moore meanwhile is desperate to escape her drunken father. So when the chance of marriage to Michael Croxon comes around, she jumps at the chance to escape one fate in life but unwittingly takes on another.
These two women are destined to cross paths and only then will the mystery of the penny hearts finally be revealed.

Locations

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Travel Guide

Delve right into the dirty dwellings and cobbled back alleys of 18th Century life in Lancashire and Manchester. This is not a pretty picture of those times. No, the setting is so thick with dirt and grime that it gets on your fingers as you turn the pages. The poorer classes really did have a horrendous time and life was more about survival than anything else.

Manchester

Mary and her life in Manchester is heartbreaking and revealing. From her working area of Cross Keys to the small streets where she runs and hides in the Pen and Angel pub, this is a city of hovels, dens, brothels and everything in between. Mary lives in the belly of the criminal underworld, already swallowed up inside it, but trying to stay afloat.

Lancashire

Grace Moore is also escaping. She suffering naivety and rely increasingly her husband who controls their lives. She has swapped on trap with another and it’s clear he’s married her for money. From a simple life in Lancashire, she then enters a world of the penny hearts…

New Zealand and Australia Penal colony

The author discovered the penny hearts when living in New Zealand,. They were smooth copper pennies engraved by convicts with messages for loved ones. They are a part of history and tell even more about the voice of these people who were sent miles away from home and family to spend their time in a penal colony with everything that that entails.

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

There’s so much to this novel – history, stories of industrial revolution Manchester, the plight of women, what happens when the money runs out and the control of men. Not to mention life as a convict shipped to the penal colony.
This is a rich tapestry of a novel with the sights, sounds and smells emanating from each and every page. Dialect as they spoke back then is rich and honest and each character richly drawn. Not sure if I liked Grace at first as I got a bit annoyed at her reaction to her fate, but I suppose all women weren’t like Mary with her gutsy attitude.
The journey across to the penal colony and the story of the Penny heart was just fascinating to me and I loved this richly drawn world that I’d never heard of. The use of the recipes at the start of each chapter was genius – the dish described was included in the setting of what you were about to read and I was delighted to see York’s fat rascals in there amongst other things. This whole package of a book is more of an experience than just a read and I’d say to take your time over it and experience it slowly.
What an experience it is.