Against the Tide
As a child, Lydia Pallas lived on her father’s fishing boat, traveling from Greece to Italy and then to Boston in America. Her life dramatically changes when her family disappears and she is sent to live in an orphanage where “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup” is used to keep the children compliant. So begins an opium addiction for far too many innocent boys and girls who grew up to be addicted adults in the early 19th century.
Bainbridge meets Lydia in her young adult years at the Boston Navy Yard, where she is now employed as a translator. Desperate for money to purchase the lovely apartment she has created into a home, she accepts translation jobs from him. The content of the texts seems silly to Lydia, but she doesn’t realize he is searching within the pages for a secret that is the initial key to destroying the opium trade throughout the United States. The remainder of this smoothly paced, endearing story focuses on their mission against an obsessive bibliophile and toward their slowly emerging romance. Their dream is a shared life of freedom from a secret, ruinous past. Gently compelling historical fiction!
