William is an honest hardworking agricultural labourer with strong family values and thanks God for his blessings. His beloved wife, Rachel, has given him four healthy children, Henry, David, John and Martha, an achievement in the Victorian era when miscarriages, stillbirths and even death of the mother in childbirth was not uncommon. And yet William has an uneasy sense of foreboding which has its origins in John's birth. His three boys, although they'd shared the same womb, couldn't be more different. Fate and providence is destined to be intolerably cruel and unkind to William and Rachel. Life is not easy for them in these austere times. William is lucky to have steady farm work and the support of an extended family, not least that of his father, Samuel, an old soldier who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. As a treat one day Samuel takes the children to a local horse fair, a trip that was to set in train a set of circumstances which would have far reaching consequences for all the family. That day Henry enlists as a dragoon, David has an epileptic fit and John's cruel nature is exposed. The family struggle to keep David's epilepsy a secret, as the illness is regarded as a sign of lunacy, and the future seems bleak. But worse is to come as John's dark and evil nature starts to shape and control all their lives. The depth of his depravity has no limits.
About the Author: Dr Stephen Bloy is a retired management, business and education consultant with a passion for English history, especially local history. Although originally a qualified engineer, he has a Doctorate degree in Education from the University of Lincoln and an MBA degree from the University of Humberside. Since retiring he has found the time to indulge himself in what he sees as his third career. Stephen has undertaken several history related projects and given many talks on the darker side of the social history of his home town, Grimsby, upon which his second book Hidden Truth (2014) was based. He has also extensively researched several hundred years of his own family's history. Through these findings, which are documented in depth in his first book Searching for Walter (2013), he drew on and used them as context for his third book John's Promise (2015) and again for his latest story Damned without Cause.