A Fire in Their Hearts : Claiming their freedom was their only crime

SCOTLAND, 1662. Hunted, held prisoner and banished for a belief... As civil war rages and King Charles II tightens his grip on the Church of Scotland, childhood sweethearts Violet and Samuel are swept into a violent struggle for religious freedom. They pledge their hearts to each other - and to a cause that will test their faith, courage and love beyond measure. Hunted as rebels, imprisoned behind the walls of the infamous Greyfriars Kirkyard and torn from their homeland, Violet and Samuel are sentenced to a life of indentured servitude on the brutal sugar plantations of Barbados. But when their ship wrecks off the coast of Orkney, they become separated. Alone and captive in a foreign land, Violet must summon every ounce of strength to survive the horrors she faces - and to cling to the hope that Samuel is still alive. Can love endure across oceans, through wars and captivity?A Fire in Their Hearts is a powerful, epic tale of love, faith and survival, inspired by the extraordinary true events of the seventeenth-century Killing Times, by the bestselling author of The Last Witch of Scotland, Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2024. 'Heartfelt and devastating . . . Philip Paris's remarkable story-telling brings some of the darkest episodes in Scottish history memorably to light.'S.G. MacLEAN, bestselling author of The Bookseller of Inverness'An utterly heart-wrenching novel.'FIONA VALPY, author of The Sky Beneath Us

<p>Locked in the hold when the crew abandons their ship, <i>The Crown of London,</i>Violet and Samuel cling to each other as the doomed vessel breaks up on rocks off the islands of Orkney. Their love for each other has helped them survive a conflict that has dominated their lives since childhood. They have been persecuted and punished, fought through bitter battles and spent desperate months together as prisoners in Edinburgh's Greyfriars churchyard. Now, banished for life and being transported to work on a plantation in a far-off country, it seems they will pay the ultimate price for their defiance. <br><br>Scotland is being ripped apart by a civil war that has already seen thousands die as Covenanters fight the armies of King Charles II over who has the right to be head of the Church of Scotland - King or Jesus. As <i>The Crown of London</i> breaks in two, Violet and Samuel are sucked violently through the broken hull and into the waiting blackness and the freezing waters of the North Sea. <br><br>Violet is recaptured along with dozens of other Covenanters, but Samuel is not amongst them. Clinging to the hope that he has somehow survived and that they will meet again, Violet is sent to Barbados where she is forced to work as an indentured servant on a sugar plantation and experience horrors that she could never have imagined possible. But has Samuel survived? And can Violet ever escape her fate on the plantation to search for her lost soulmate? <br><br>This epic tale is the story of two ordinary people caught up in the Killing Times, bringing to life a brutal but forgotten period of Scottish history that forged a nation's future.</p>