When You Rescued Me
This is excellent historical fiction set in 1776 London. Hannah Dennington and Samuel Ross’s lives intersected briefly fourteen years before, altering the life path of each. One suffered guilt and nightmares, the other redemption and a chance to change. Neither expects another encounter, especially as Hannah mistakenly fears her identification of Samuel as a thief led to his execution, about which she suffers recurring nightmares. When their paths cross again, they don’t recognize each other, but once again their lives intertwine as crime and war threaten the Dennington family and London.
Many historical and fictional characters, actions, and circumstances mold around a tale of redemption and romance. Skillful plotting uses the fictional characters to illustrate the age and add depth. Eighteenth-century London was a dirty, dangerous place, but Sir John Fielding strives to improve public safety through organization and leadership of his Bow Street Runners. Samuel, once the beneficiary of Fielding’s summary judgment, seeks to join his force of proto-police investigators, not knowing his duties will bring him to the one whose witness against him changed his life for the better.
Physical and emotional descriptions of the location transport the reader into that time and place. Buildings, wharfs, clothes, manners, and speech paint a London quite different from a century—let alone a quarter millennium—later.
