Torrents of Fire

The year is 1760. European slave-trading powers have established forts, factories and castles along the West African coast in order to supply slaves for the burgeoning Caribbean plantations that provided sugar for the insatiable European market. Torrents of Fire, the second book in the Reap the Forgotten Harvest trilogy, is a stirring, hope-affirming saga set during the English campaign for the abolition of slavery. It follows the activities of the League Against the Importation of Negroes from the Coast of Guinea, centred around the Beecham household in Deptford, London, and their long-running conflicts with the Flemings, a powerful slave-owning family of landed gentry Catholics from Yorkshire. Continually trying to outwit each other across the years, their activities extend to the Caribbean and West Africa. Set against this fast-moving backdrop is the love of a black man and a white woman fighting the odds in eighteenth century England. Meanwhile, the English public is becoming increasingly vocal in their animosity to the slave trade. Led by abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and Olaudah Equiano, swathes of ordinary working people unite to support the campaign to free the recaptured slave, James Sommersett. Freed by Lord Mansfield at the Kings Bench in the 1772 landmark proceedings, the precedent banished slavery from the shores of England. But, the law does not always determine what happens on the streets of London and in plantations far afield, as the protagonists discover...