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William Morrow
April 2008
On Sale: April 1, 2008
Featuring: Alice Cole
320 pages ISBN: 0061240257 EAN: 9780061240256 Hardcover
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Historical | Literature and Fiction Literary
Alice Cole spent
her first seven years living in two smoky, crowded rooms in
London with
her family. But a new home and a better life waited in the
colonies, or
so her father promised—a bright dream that turned to ashes
when her
brothers and mother took ill and died during the arduous voyage.
Arriving in New England unable to meet the added expenses
incurred by
their misfortunes at sea, her father bound Alice into
servitude to pay
his debts. By the age of fifteen, Alice can barely remember the time
when she
was not a servant to John Morton and his daughter, Nabby.
Though work
fills her days, life with the Mortons is pleasant; Mr.
Morton calls
Alice his "sweet, good girl," and Nabby, only three years
older, is her
friend, companion, and now newly married, her mistress. But Nabby's marriage is not happy, and soon Alice is
caught up in
its storm; seeing nothing ahead but her own destruction, she
defies her
new master and the law and runs away to Boston. There she
meets a
sympathetic widow named Lyddie Berry and her lawyer
companion, Eben
Freeman. Frightened and alone, Alice impulsively stows away
on their
ship to Satucket on Cape Cod, where the Widow Berry offers
Alice a bed
and a job making cloth in support of the new boycott of
British wool
and linen. At Widow Berry's, Alice believes her old secret is safe,
until it
becomes threatened by a new one. As the days pass, the
political and
the personal stakes rise and intertwine, ultimately setting
off a chain
of events that will force Alice to question all she thought
she knew.
Bound by law, society, and her own heart, Alice soon
discovers that
freedom—as well as gratitude, friendship, trust, and
love—has a price
far higher than any she ever imagined. Library Journal hailed Sally Gunning's previous novel,
The Widow's
War, as "historical fiction at its best." With Bound, this
wonderfully
talented writer returns to pre-Revolutionary New England and
evokes a
long-ago time filled with uncertainty, hardship, and promise.
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