Unrest

Brash, duplicitous women, murder and mayhem, and illicit love abound in this wild adventure for fans of Outlander and The Home for Unwanted Girls, announcing a major new talent in historical fiction. Bytown, 1836: The lawless cesspool that will become the city of Ottawa is beginning to reek of more than just swamp water. Rife with squalor, corruption, and organized crime, class injustice divides the town more starkly than the canal that bisects it, cutting off its Irish poorwho are ready to fight back. On a homestead in the woods near Bytown, a domestic drama is also reaching a fever pitch. Quiet, ungainly Mariah, her face scarred in a dog attack back home in Ireland, has been living on sufferance in her sister Biddys home since they sailed for a new life. Shes treated as the spinster aunt, a farmhand working alongside Biddys husband, Seamus. But the three of them are keeping a bitter secret: Mariah, in love with Seamus, is the mother of Thomas, the familys oldest child. And shes about to burst under the strain of making herself small. While Mariah plots to claim her rightful place in the world, Thomas keeps secrets of his own. Eager to escape the roiling tensions at home, hes apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in Bytown, but soon falls into trouble too big for him to handle. To save himself, hes made a deal with the one man colder than the devilPeter Aylen, leader of a powerful Irish rebel gang. As danger mounts, both for Thomas and for the town, theres only one way for Mariah to save her son: by becoming the hero of her own story, facing her deepest fears with a determination she never knew she had.