"The New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Room brings a slice of his own family history to life through extensive research and rich storytelling. Beginning with his great-great grandfather Abraham Block, acclaimed novelist Simon Mawer sifts through evidence like an archaeologist, piecing together the stories of his ancestors. Abraham's young life in the bleak Suffolk village where his parents worked as agricultural laborers was transformed by two key events: finding the drowned body of an unknown man, whose two gold coins he and his brother would secret away from the beach; and a visit from his uncle Isaac, who encouraged him to pursue an apprenticeship and escape this region with so few opportunities. At fifteen, in 1847, he left home, signing away the next five years in an indenture aboard a ship, which would circuitously lead him to London and well beyond, to far-flung cities on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. With a keen eye and a nuanced consideration of the limits of what we can know about the past, Mawer paints a compelling, intimate portrait of life in the nineteenth century."--