Agnes Trussel is a country girl who lives with her family in Sussex in 1752, and there she would have stayed in spite of her longing for an education had it not been for the unwanted attentions of a local boy who forces himself on her, impregnates her, and continues to tell the innocent Agnes that she must tend to his “needs” will she or won’t she. So Agnes runs away to London.
The setting, the characterization, and the narrative tension in this debut novel (published in 2010) are all excellent. As Agnes comes closer and closer to the birth of her hidden and unwanted child, I was drawn into her story, hoping against hope that she would be able to find a good way to deal an illicit child in a day and age when a pregnant, unmarried, and poor girl didn’t have many choices. If the events in the book and the relatively happy ending are rather unlikely given the time and the cultural environment, and I think they are, I didn’t care because I wanted Agnes to survive and thrive.
The book is also about fireworks and the history of making fireworks. Engineer Husband used to make his own fireworks when he was a boy—rockets and explosives and other pyrotechnics. He also wrote and typed–on a typewriter— his own how-to manual on making fireworks. I thought while reading this novel that he would enjoy all the technical parts about the fireworks lab where Agnes gets a job. But he probably wouldn’t be much interested in the story itself. I liked both the setting and the history parts of the book and also the story.
For historical fiction readers, fireworks fans, and anyone like me who is reading through the eighteenth century.
Fireworks by candlelight: the art of pyrotechnics in the 18th century.