Paperback edition
A Wild and True Relation
‘This book is a rarity – a novel as remarkable for the vigour of the storytelling as for its literary ambition. Kim Sherwood is a writer of capacity, potency and sophistication.’ DAME HILARY MANTEL
Longlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award
Shortlisted for the Winston Graham Prize for Historical Fiction
'Enlivens the standard tale of swashbuckling adventure, adding feminist spice... Rich and immersive.' SUNDAY TIMES - HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH
A Wild & True Relation opens during the Great Storm of 1703, as smuggler Tom West confronts his lover Grace for betraying him to the Revenue. Leaving Grace's cottage in flames, he takes her orphaned daughter on board ship disguised as a boy to join his crew. But Molly, or Orlando as she must call herself, will grow up to outshine all the men of his company and seek revenge – and a legacy – all of her own.
Woven into Molly's story are the writers – from Celia Fiennes to Hester Thrale to George Eliot – who are transfixed by her myth and who, over three centuries, come together to solve the mystery of her life. With extraordinary verve, Sherwood remakes the eighteenth-century adventure novel and illuminates the forgotten women writers of the past.
‘A gripping feminist adventure story.’
– Cosmopolitan
‘[Sherwood] adopts the dramatic conventions of the 18th-century adventure novel to spin a tale of secrecy, betrayal and law-breaking on the open seas, while cleverly subverting those same codes to reveal an inherently feminist agenda . . . champions rather than elides the female voice, giving her heroine the right to both speak and record the truth about her life.’
– Harper’s Bazaar
'Employing lusty couplings, a brooding hero and a tender young heroine, Sherwood plays knowingly with the romantic genre... The extra material here – interpolations, commentary, pastiche – gives an intertextual gloss to what might otherwise come across as a straightforward swashbuckling yarn. ... By both undermining and indulging the genre, it seems Sherwood is having her delicious contraband cake and eating it, too.'
– The Guardian
‘Breathlessly swashbuckling ... both full-blooded historical fiction and thoughtful literary deconstruction, both elements immaculately researched. You can take pleasure in her punchy plotting and flamboyant nautical descriptions, plus the subversive Molly's complex navigation of those dual selves - with "Orlando" a clear nod to Woolf's similarly gender-bending novel.’
– Daily Telegraph
‘A blistering tale of early 18th-century love, betrayal, murder, and revenge, wrapped up in a novel of smuggling, piracy, shipbuilding, and a girl who is not as she seems. The prose is superb.’
– Historical Novels Society