Hope Never Knew Horizon

Douglas Bruton

Taproot Press

Paperback

180pp

ISBN: 9781739207786

Fiction

Publication date: 18 April 2024

£11.99

Wexford County, 1891. The unlikely discovery of a beached blue whale sets in motion a series of events leading to the present-day re-installation of a fundamental piece of the Natural History Museum.

Amherst, circa. 1850. Margaret O’Brien, domestic help for the Dickinson family, finds a letter revealing an intimate secret between the reclusive Miss Emily and her brother’s fiancé Susan Huntington.

London, circa. 1880. A young working-class woman named Ada Alice Pullen meets the esteemed painter Frederic Leighton, beginning a relationship that will transform her and the world of art forever.

Three cultural objects associated with hope, their stories told from the perspective of those marginalised from history: the model, the maid, and the coxswain’s girlfriend.