On the windswept island of Samson, at the edge of the world, fifteen-year-old Armorel Rosevean knows every tide pool, every granite shelf, every mood of the sea that has shaped her isolated home for generations. Born and raised among the ancient stones and rolling Atlantic waters of the Scilly Isles, she carries the weight of her heritage in her blood, yet her heart hungers for something beyond the horizon. When two strangers wash up in peril off the coast, Armorel acts. With Peter, the bailiff's boy, she braves the dangerous waters to rescue them, setting in motion a chain of events that will shatter her small-world tranquility. Besant paints the Scilly Isles with a poet's eye, the changing faces of the sea, the grey rocks lashed by white surf, the old house perched halfway down the hill, creating a vivid backdrop for Armorel's transformation from innocent girl to a woman caught between the echoes of the past and the uncertainties of to-day. This is a romance rooted in place, where the land itself seems to breathe and scheme alongside its inhabitants.
