Whenever I am at an airport I always make my way to the 'airport special' stand in the bookshops as quite often one can pick up a good paperback edition of a book not yet published, or just published in hardback, and I always manage to find one or two I want. This time I picked up Crossed Bones by Jane Johnson. The cover is a tad off putting and does the book a disservice I feel, giving the impression of it being a standard bodice-ripper, when in fact it is more than that. OK it is romantic and contains a kidnap, 
shipwreck, Barbary pirates et al but it is absorbingly written and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Julia Lovat is dumped by her lover Michael, who to soften the blow, gives her a present of a book "The Needlewoman's Glorie". Julia is an embroiderer and is intrigued by the story of Cat Tregenna the owner of the book some 400 years earlier. The story is set in Cornwall, I seem to be Cornish bound at the moment with Daphne by Picardie and Forster, but I am not complaining and there are mentions of Marazion, Mousehole and St Michael's Mount in this story, all areas I know well as I used to visit when my in-laws lived near Penzance.
Cat Tregenna is a servant to Lady Harris of Kenegie on the Cornish coast and is determined not to marry her cousin Rob and be immured in the life of a farmer's wife, she wishes to use her talents for embroidery and sewing and go to London and leave Cornwall behind. She gets more than she bargained for however, when she is amongst the congregation of a church attacked by Barbary pirates raiding along the Cornish coast, and she is thrown into the hold of a corsair and must survive sea battles and the long journey to Morocco before she is sold into slavery.
The two stories of both Julia and Cat are told side by side, a two narrative device that I always enjoy as we switch from one protagonist to the other and get to know their thoughts and feelings. The waters are muddied somewhat by Michael realising that he has given Julia the book by mistake, he had bought another for her, much less valuable and he follows her to Morocco where she has gone to find out what happened to Cat, and attempts to steal it back from her.
I loved every word of it. I sat in Barcelona airport waiting for my plane, started it and read it solidly through the wait and my flight and closed up the book as we came into land at Stansted and just before I had to drive home. Perfect timing as I would not have been able to set off without knowing how it finished.
There is something about Cornwall that is so inherently wild and romantic that any book set there captures the imagination immediately. We also have the part of the story set in Morocco with its teeming bazaars and dust and heat as a contrast, a fiery heroine both past and present, a dashing ship's captain, a faithful lover who travels to Morocco to bring Cat home...... all the ingredients for a ripping yarn.
A story like this is never going to make the Booker list or win any prizes and some people may turn their noses up at it, but it is historically accurate and well researched, the story zips along keeping the reader intrigued, written with great panache and style - I found I enjoyed every minute of it and that's what it is all about, is it not?
Keep an eye out for it.
