Beckstone is a general novel set in 1712 on a fictional tenant farm in the Yorkshire Dales. The farmer, Will Black, is deeply in debt when the factor, Josiah Fitchet, turns up to claim back rent for the owner, a wealthy baronet. With him is the baronet's grand-daughter, Madeleine de Courtenay, his only relative but not his heir because she is female, although she does appear to have the promise of a dowry in spite of her relationship with her grandfather being dreadful. Madeleine is an army brat, whose mother, the knight's daughter, chose to marry a Huguenot soldier in the Duke of Marlborough's army. Worse still, she chose to follow her husband, bearing first a son - potentially his grandfather's male heir - and then a daughter, Madeleine, before dying soon after. The grandfather in his dotage sees Madeleine, who looks very like her father, as the cause of her mother's death. Illogically, she is also blamed for preventing her brother from returning home to the family estate instead of becoming a soldier like his father. When first the boy and then his father are killed in battle, a devastated Madeleine has to return to her grandfather's stately home to a life of gracious idleness totally alien to her. She has grown up in the army baggage train as a busy, innovative and determined individual trying to be 'one of the boys', learning highly unladylike skills like nursing, cookery, management, problem-solving and book-keeping while expected to obey orders the instant they are given. The dowry becomes relevant at the beginning of the book when Fitchet produces a document offering its exchange for the remission of years of back rent of the farm, provided Madeleine and Will marry. Although highly suspicious of Fitchet's part in the plan, they decide on a marriage for six months, secretly and on paper only, since both have powerful reasons to escape their current situations. First they need to draw up a very careful transfer document and a separate loan agreement which will give them the working capital not covered by the dowry. Then they must buy seed and stock and hire labourers willing to help them carry out an increasing number of ventures, while waging battle against ugly prejudice spilling from several quarters in the village. Set two years before the death of Queen Anne, by then childless, and five years after a sullen Scotland voted itself into political union with England, it is a time of turmoil and uncertainty. Marlborough has just been replaced as Captain General and the Spanish War of Succession rumbles on. The country is weary of war, losing its pity for the many jobless army casualties on the streets. The unsettling beginnings of both the agricultural and industrial revolutions are stirring and political perfidy is suspected at the highest level. All of these touch the new and disparate community struggling to establish itself at Beckstone Farm, with Will and Madeleine stretched to the limits of their differing abilities to keep the farm viable. Then there is the mysterious Mulberry Duck which young Timty, wise beyond his years, keeps saying is the source of their troubles. He turns out to be right in an unexpected way.
About the Author: Publishing, then teaching and raising a family have provided ample material for writing, drawing and painting, while following a peripatetic husband from Dorset to the north of Scotland (home) via the Western Isles and Buckinghamshire. Two houses were built, several others renovated, two virgin gardens created, both on slopes, huh, one with a six acre wood which grew with astonishing speed - or is that the whisper of time whizzing past? Music and the arts have always played a large part in life, as have many crafts, including bee-keeping. A love of history led to voluntary work at a local National Trust for Scotland castle covering guiding, publicity, flower arranging and education; for this a range of material had to be written and school liaison managed. Plays were regularly performed in schools and at local community groups and junior clubs, written in both English and the local Scottish Doric dialect, not all for children. A year's trip round the world, half in the New World and half in southern Europe following in the children's gap year footsteps, led to a diary of two million words - and a bumper WW2 novel written, still being edited. Now back in Scotland, dancing is the best way to keep fit, and puppy walking for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Along the way many articles and stories have been published in Britain plus a few in North America, a couple of spells as a newspaper contributor popped up along with several commissions for reports needing decent presentation, and the novels are stacking up under the bed. The craft of selling is not part of this Scottish psyche, in spite of netting quite a few writing awards. Yet.