A Lad of Grit: A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea in Restoration Times

The year is 1660. England holds its breath at the threshold of the Restoration, and young Aubrey Wentworth watches his father bleed out on a dusty road, murdered by a Roundhead soldier named Increase Joyce. This single act of violence shatters a boy and ignites a man's hunger for justice. Aubrey flees to the sea, signing aboard a merchant vessel bound for adventure, danger, and the slim hope of one day finding his father's killer among the tangled politics of Restoration England. The ocean itself becomes his crucible: he learns to navigate not just treacherous waters but the equally perilous currents of human cruelty, political intrigue, and the cold arithmetic of revenge. This is adventure fiction at its old-fashioned best: a tale of loss and retribution, of a boy forged into something harder by salt and suffering, and of one young man's determination to make a murderer answer for his crime.