The Alum Maker's Secret

LONG-LISTED FOR THE PEGGY CHAPMAN-ANDREWS NOVEL AWARD (Bridport Prize). The prize is for an author's first novel. At the inception of the industrial era, Ana, daughter of a Spanish urine trader, complains she feels 'bartered like a Moor' to procure work for her father in a desolate and inhospitable region of northern England. Making alum, a beautiful translucent crystal, essential to the dyeing of cloth, has been a lucrative business for centuries, however, its obscure and obnoxious manufacture, burning rocks and stirring together urine and seaweed, dominates a remote part of eighteenth century Britain. Ana is put to work with the inheritor of the 'alum-makers secret', manager Robert, and witnessing the almost alchemical rituals of his work, an attachment starts to form. Shortly after her arrival a canny scientist-on-the-make arrives from London's Royal Society to investigate a disturbing discovery in a quarry rock fall. 'Alchemy, sex and palaeontology in 18th century Yorkshire.' Like Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' its language is as stark as its setting, austere and shot through with occasional ravishing beauty. This exposition of an obscure, infernal activity is, as with 'Moby Dick', the backdrop to a very human drama.