The Memory Palace - Hardcover

A lavish and intelligent historical romance that moves between the ferment of Stuart England and the dangers of Cuzco and Florida as tragically separated lovers John and Zeal struggle to survive and be reunited. An epic love story set in the period of Longitude, for readers of Philippa Gregory and Rose Tremain.

Zeal Beester is the mistress of the rolling Hawkridge Estate – a difficult position for a young woman in 1639, but almost impossible now that the man she loves has been forced to flee to the New World, leaving her pregnant. Just three weeks before, a great fire destroyed her house – to some this will be seen as God's judgment on her depravity. The Reverend Praise-God Gifford will want her burnt as a witch.
Rather than this, Zeal decides to throw herself to her death from the roof of the chapel. But being passionate and spirited, when she is offered the chance to stay alive – to let the child live! – she takes it, and becomes the wife of Philip Wentworth, an ageing soldier and adventurer. Philip's extraordinary tales of the New World fill her mind treacherously with images of her lover John Nightingale ... to whom in her heart she stays faithful.
But given the fact of her new husband, how will John ever know the truth of her feelings? In time she may no longer know herself. 'I must begin to leave footprints. Then I, at least, can track myself back and remember the journey and who I was when I made it.'
She starts to rebuild Hawkridge House. Part maze, part theatre, part great country house, it will be an astonishing place filled with magical automata and hidden rooms, and it will be the secret map of a young woman's heart.
Rich in loving detail of an England about to vanish for ever into the chaos of the Civil War and in mysterious tales of a still-mythical New World, The Memory Palace tells of the sheer danger of being a woman alone in days of violent political and religious unrest. And always there is the unsuspected enemy at the centre of the maze, with only death in mind.
From heart-stopping beginning to haunting end, this compelling and suspenseful novel proves Christie Dickason to be one of the most gifted historical novelists of the day.

Christie Dickason was born in America but also lived as a child in Thailand, Mexico and Switzerland. Harvard-educated, and a former theatre director and choreographer (with the Royal Shakespeare Company and at Ronnie Scott’s among others), she lives in London with her family.