The Sleeper

The Sleeper Synopsis

Living in uncertain times during the year 1685, Abraham Barachin, a young, penniless silversmith left France to seek his fortune in England. He made the perilous journey to Kingston-upon-Hull after a chance encounter with an Englishman in a church in Paris.

The stranger had told him a bizarre story about his need to return two silver saltcellars and a beaker, in which there was a stone, to the family of his late wife. Despite his scepticism, Abraham had agreed.

Over three hundred years later, Clare Cartwright spotted a piece of Hull silver at an antiques fair. What caught her eye was the odd engraving on it. What was its significance?

Shortly after making the purchase, she discovered something alarming about it. Curious to unravel its meaning, Clare journeyed across time and borders where she found surprising connections to life in seventeenth-century Hull, and a renewed sense of purpose to discover more about the life and times of the maker of her latest acquisition.

A message from the author - I never intended to write a book. It came about long after I finished the research, long after I should have put the whole episode to bed and got stuck into something new. But I couldn’t, it would not leave me alone until I felt compelled to put pen to paper to clear my head. As it is the twenty-first century, fingers to keyboard to be accurate.

The story seemed to unfold itself before my eyes with much of it simply falling into my lap. After Clare bought the cup, coincidence after coincidence followed whilst she was researching it, so much so the story almost wrote itself. If that all sounds too cryptic, reading it is the only way to find out what happened.