PREVIEW REVIEW: Crossed Bones by Jane Johnson

Reviewed by Jennie Hughes

If the sub-title of Crossed Bones - 'the all-true adventures and most unlikely romance of a pirate’s slave girl - puts you off a little, don’t worry; there’s not a ripped bodice or heaving bosom anywhere. Well, apart from on the cover, but we'll gloss over that...

It’s the story of a seventeenth-century Cornish girl, Cat, who is a talented needlewoman dreaming dreams of a more exotic future than the one that seems likely – marriage to her cousin, drudgery, babies – when a pirate ship raids her village and carries her and several of her neighbours and relatives off to be slaves in Morocco.

There Cat eventually ends up teaching embroidery to her master’s womenfolk and, of course, falling in love with him and rejecting her Cornish cousin who has braved hell and high water to rescue her.

The tale is interwoven with the story of Julia, also a needlewoman, who finds Cat’s story written in the margins of an old embroidery pattern-book. She thinks she may be distantly related to Cat and goes to Morocco to research the story further, where she meets her own destiny, and true love.

The historical and Moorish details are convincing, interesting and well-described. The two stories are neatly stitched together and the writing keeps you reading on. Altogether an enjoyable book, and one which leaves you feeling you may have learnt something as well – an added bonus!

Crossed Bones is out (in hardback) on 3 April.

Rating: 4/5

Like this? Try: The Vanishing Point by Mary Sharratt

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