Cornwall, 1854 - Alice Rowe owes everything to Reverend Alfred Markham who rescued her from a workhouse, employing her in his parsonage as a housemaid. So when he dies suddenly of a heart attack, Alice faces a fearful and uncertain future. But as one chapter in Alice's life ends, another begins. For as she discovers the Reverend's body in the woods near their house, she meets Gideon Davey - a 'ganger' who is laying a nearby stretch of railway line. Not only does Gideon help recover the bod...

1915: Ben Retallick is asked by a War Office friend to provide two traction engines for a secret expedition attempting to take two gunboats overland from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika - more than 3,000 miles - to wrest control of the lake from the Germans. He sends engines with young Ruddlemoor as the driver, who meets a Portuguese East African nurse and takes her side against a group of white racist south Africans.Meanwhile Antonia St Anna is influential in having Ben released, when...

Josh Retallick and his wife Miriam take on an exciting new challenge as owners of Ruddlemoor china clay works on the outskirts of St Austell. But a family tragedy forces Josh to leave almost immediately. When he returns he knows that his youngest grandson will one day follow him.So it is that several years later Ben Retallick journeys to Cornwall. His arrival rocks the local community - labourers are wary of this strapping young lad; rival clay owners see him as an unwelcome threat;...

Josh Retallick, hardy son of a respected Cornish family, and the wild Miriam, daughter of a drink-sodden copper miner, explore together the secret places and wild creatures of Bodmin Moor, unaware that fate will soon sweep them apart.Yet destiny brings them together again and again through hard and bitter years when the forces of property and power fight to crush the sturdy mining folk who refuse, come what may, to see their spirit broken . . .

Local landowner John Bettison has forbidden his workers to attend church, but when curate Toby Lovell arrives in Porthluney, he is determined to bring about change. Injured during the Battle of Trafalgar, Toby is used to facing adversity but little does he realise the challenge that lies ahead of him.But the trouble really starts when Toby falls in love with Bethany Poole, a local Quaker girl. When her society rejects her, she turns to Toby for support but a dreadful misunderstandi...

On a wild stormy night in 1813, Nathan Jago, drift fisherman, ex-prizefighter and lord of the manor of Polrudden, rescues a young boy from a drowning mother's arms as a French ship founders on the jagged Cornish rocks. It is an act that will profoundly affect his destiny.Despite hard times, Nathan and his wife Amy adopt Jean-Paul and bring him up with their own son. Nathan considers a return to the ring in the struggle to make a living and keep the ancient house in the family. But e...

Daniel Retallick has grown to manhood during the years of flood tide in the chronicles of Africa. The son of Josh and Miriam Retallick, he settles with his wife and children on a homestead in a valley of Matabeleland.But the years are the 1880s, and the Matabele impis are advancing with their singing spears towards the deal-dealing Maxim guns of the white man. Daniel Retallick's loyalties, plans and dreams are about to be swept by fate into the whirlpool of history...

Cornwall 1864. Josh and Miriam Retallick return home from Africa to find the chimneys smokeless, the men and women hungry, and Lottie, guarding goats on Bodmin Moor, an unmistakable Trago in looks and spirit.Josh soon takes stock of these hard times to become a new power in his native land. While Jane Trago, a sensual woman but an unfeeling mother, sweeps in like an ill wind to take up HER new trade in the local tavern.Against the fluctuating fortunes of the Sharptor mine w...

Josh and Miriam Retallick and their grandson Ben seem almost part of the wild and rugged Cornish landscape of 1913. Yet a revolutionary spirit of change is sweeping across the country - and the whole of Europe - with terrifying haste.Even before the outbreak of the Great War, with strike action compromising his position in the community and threatening the future of the China clay industry, Ben is unsettled by the presence of his cousin Emma Cotton. Inspired by the blossoming suffr...

It is 1846: the ship was bound for Australia. Aboard were Josh Retallick and Miriam Thackeray, prisoners destined for the convict settlements . . . until the random hand of fate wrecked their vessel on the Skeleton Coast of South West Africa.Far from the brooding Bodmin Moor, Josh and Miriam are strangers in a strange and hostile land, an alien world of Bushmen and Hereros, of foraging Boers and greedy traders, of ivory tusks and smuggled guns . . .

South-West England, 1812. England is at war with America and when two hundred and fifty American prisoners-of-war arrive at Dartmoor prison, it is already overcrowded with French prisoners. Among the newcomers is Lieutenant Pilgrim Penn, an American merchant seaman, who soon falls in love with a local girl at a market held inside the prison walls. The inmates fight amongst themselves, despite their common enemy and the Americans are a particularly troublesome group. When the governor's dau...

Cornish farmer Joseph Moyle's loyalty to the crown goes well rewarded - his stepson Ralf is appointed page to the future Charles II. And when Ralf takes up his post, Britain is in the midst of its most tumultuous period ever - the war between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians and the dawning of an entirely new era . . .Ralf's duties oblige him to follow the heir to the throne through the western counties, where he experiences not only court intrigue and the constant threat of ...