I was genuinely sorry to finish this book. It had me completely engaged... and I loved the clever surprise in the middle of it. Louis de Bernieres, author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin In 1820 London, landscape artist William Daniell hires Jesse Cloud, a homeless teenager, to be his apprentice. But all is not as it seems. Both William and his prentice must make their own inner journeys to expose others' betrayals and explore their own possibilities. Faced with bankruptcy, starvation looms. Friendships fragment. The artist must learn how to see and his prentice must learn how to survive - while the truth shatters all. The powerlessness of the poor and women's suffrage are a constant presence tainting the air. This troubled period of change and division provides a vivid sense of time and place. William's casual assumptions about the poor in society and about women in particular challenges his very identity. An accident-prone venture to remote East Anglian shores becomes a journey of revelation and self-discovery as long-hidden truths about their backgrounds begin to unravel, and the secretive nature of the prentice-boy gains sudden significance. William's camera obscura captures an insecure society of inequality and flux. Two centuries later it is uncannily familiar and resonates deeply.