In the mid eighteen sixties a Wiltshire family of eight lives an idyllic, if somewhat austere life just outside of the small village of East Knoyle. News of the impending arrival of a seventh child to Phoebe and John, throws them into turmoil. As John is dealt a savage blow by cruel fate, Phoebe and her children find themselves cast into a chaotic world, caught between the cruel, vindictive and sadistic avarice of an unscrupulous landlord and the unyielding support of a loyal friend. As the landlord racks up the pressure, their world spirals out of control and the family are split asunder. Louisa's ordeal is just beginning in a time when the shadows cast by her past darken all paths towards the light. This is a work of 'faction'. That is, a series of documented facts in the lives of some very real people, linked together by a fiction woven around those facts to create a compelling story of what might have been. The book leaves the reader with a mystery, which is solvable but is as yet unsolved. What really happened to Louisa? The answer is out there somewhere buried deep in the archives, just waiting to be discovered.