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The Wandering Heart
A Novel By Praise for The Wandering Heart "A lost journal from Captain Cook's ill-fated journey to the Pacific Northwest. A young woman's fatal leap from a stone turret. A love poem scribbled on a scrap of ancient vellum. And of course an intrepid historical sleuth, Professor Lizzie Manning, who discovers a few long-lost secrets of her own. In the tradition of A. S. Byatt's Possession , Mary Malloy's debut novel is a complex and masterfully woven tale that will keep readers up far into the night." An absorbing, intricate plot, brought together masterfully at the end...A domestic gothic, not unlike Wilkie Collins' Women in White or Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables ."
"A tour de force -- fascinating, highly readable, and meticulously researched. Highly recommended." -- Nathaniel Philbrick, best-selling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Sea of Glory, and Mayflower "Meticulously researched and engagingly written." -- Seattle Times "The breadth and depth of Malloy's research is astonishing ... She addresses these various sources comprehensively and confidently, and writes with flair."-- Bookwatch
In April 2009, Leapfrog Press will release its first historical mystery, The Wandering Heart , by historian and acclaimed writer Mary Malloy (Leapfrog Press; April 15, 2009; $15.95). Winner of the 2006 John Lyman Book Award for Best Maritime Biography and a Bookwatch American History Shelf author, Malloy applies her usual wit and style, as well as thorough research, to her first work of fiction. When historian Lizzie Manning is invited to Britain to study the Hatton family's history in their ancestral home, she can have no idea where her research will take her. Before long she finds herself traveling backward in time, from the eighteenth-century voyage of Captain Cook to the Crusades of the thirteenth century. She digs into the Medieval past using all the tools of the historian's trade: shipboard logbooks, correspondence, ethnographic artifacts, artworks, the Hatton family home, the surrounding landscape, and the crypts in several churches. Her findings lead her into three interrelated mysteries, her own family's history, and a search for a Crusader's disembodied heart. Readers have shown a fascination with the process of historical research, and increasingly want expertise and deep familiarity with real historical material. Mary Malloy delivers this in abundance. Complete with bound-in discussion questions and a Q&A with the author, The Wandering Heart is sure to enthrall readers everywhere.
Mary Malloy is the author of four maritime history books, including the award-winning Devil on the Deep Blue Sea: The Notorious Career of Samuel Hill of Boston . She has a Ph.D. from Brown University and is a professor of maritime history at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Mass., and museum studies at Harvard University. The Wandering Heart , the first of a trilogy, is her first novel. THE WANDERING HEART · Mary Malloy 396 pages · ISBN: 978-0-9815148-5-7 · Trade paperback, $15.95 April 15, 2009 · Published by Leapfrog Press LLC |