Long-listed for inaugural first novel award!
The Alum Maker's Secret has been long-listed for the first Peggy Chapman-Andrews Novel Award (Bridport Prize).
The Alum Maker's Secret
08/09/2014
27/04/2014
03/01/2013
The Alum Maker's Secret is a novel by Stephen Chance set in the 18th century alum mining hamlet of Scarshead.
At the inception of the industrial era, Ana, daughter
of a widowed Spanish urine trader, complains she feels 'bartered like a Moor'
to procure work for her father in a desolate and inhospitable region of northern
England.
Making alum, a beautiful translucent crystal, essential to the dyeing of cloth, has been a lucrative business for centuries, however, its obscure and obnoxious manufacture, burning rocks and stirring together urine and seaweed, dominates a remote part of eighteenth century Britain.
Making alum, a beautiful translucent crystal, essential to the dyeing of cloth, has been a lucrative business for centuries, however, its obscure and obnoxious manufacture, burning rocks and stirring together urine and seaweed, dominates a remote part of eighteenth century Britain.
Ana
is put to work with the inheritor of the 'alum-makers secret', manager Robert,
and witnessing the almost alchemical rituals of his work, an attachment starts
to form. Shortly after her arrival a canny scientist-on-the-make arrives from
London's Royal Society to investigate a disturbing discovery in a quarry rock
fall.
©StephenChance
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