He was just fifteen when he found himself in the wrong place at wrong time, and was press-ganged into the His Majesty’s Navy. I was captivated first by a wonderful cover, then by an intriguing epigraph, and then by two stories, at first seeming simple, that twisted and turned together in ways that were wonderfully unexpected.įirst there was Luke. The worlds they find are more dangerous and more exciting than they could ever have imagined, and when they collide the consequences are astonishing and irrevocable.Ī breathtakingly accomplished love story and a gripping search for identity and survival, She Rises is a bold, brilliant, and utterly original novel. Luke, aching for the girl he left behind and determined to one day find his way back to her, embarks on a long and perilous journey across the ocean.

Louise navigates her new life among the streets and crooked alleys of Harwich, where groaning houses riddled with smugglers' tunnels are flooded by the spring tides, and love burns brightly in the shadows. He must learn fast and choose his friends well if he is to survive the brutal hardships of a sailor's life and its many dangers, both up high in the rigging and in the dark below decks. Unable to escape, Luke is beaten and press ganged and sent to sea on board the warship Essex. Intertwined with her story is fifteen-year-old Luke's: He is drinking in a Harwich tavern when it is raided by Her Majesty's Navy. There she meets Rebecca, her haughty young mistress, who is unlike anyone Louise has encountered before: as unexpected as she is fascinating.

But when she is offered work in the bustling naval port of Harwich, as a lady's maid to a wealthy captain's daughter, she leaps at the chance to see more of the world. It is 1740 and Louise Fletcher, a young dairy maid on an Essex farm, has been warned of the lure of the sea for as long as she can remember-after all, it stole away her father and brother.

She Rises by Kate Worsley