Full of energy and delicious turn of phrase...

THE YEAR is 1740 and young Louise Fletcher leaves the humdrum routine of an Essex farm for the hustle and bustle of the naval port of Harwich, swapping her life as a dairymaid for service in a wealthy captain’s townhouse. Louise has been raised on her landlocked mother’s cautionary tales of the allure of the sea—both Louise’s father and brother abandoned their womenfolk for adventure on the choppy waves. “Men always leave,” her mother warns, “and the sea never gives them up, once she’s got them”. Louise’s new mistress is like nobody she has ever met. The widowed captain's beautiful daughter, Rebecca Handley, is untutored in womanly ways, does not know how to manage a household, number linen, keep track of the wine cellar, or even get a stain out of fine cambric. One minute she plays the respectable young lady, the next her coarse language rivals that of the port’s liveliest tars. A 15-year old Luke is drinking in a Harwich tavern when it is raided by His Majesty’s Navy. Unable to escape, Luke is beaten and press ganged and sent to sea on board the warship Essex. 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. Louise navigates her new life among the streets and crooked alleys of Harwich, where fine houses concealing smugglers' tunnels are flooded by the Spring tides, and love burns brightly in the shadows. And 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. Worsley’s is a generous novel, concerned with the vulnerability of human life (female life in particular) and the cost of freedom to characters so thoroughly beset by cruelty and limitation. She Rises is a story of love, adventure, identity and secrets and all of this in a world that lives and breathes. The houses and the streets of a harbour town. The taverns and the docks. The ships that set sail into the wider world. The stories are effectively told, the prose style distinctive and suiting it perfectly. Like the sea, it had quiet times, but there other time when waves rose and fell, and those moments are quite breathtaking. The way in which Luke’s and Louise’s narratives came together was unexpectedly wonderful and, though the change of gear was a little clunky, but it raised the story to greater heights.