P F Clayfield

The Land of Lost Content P F Clayfield

Publisher Marketing: Dateline Ireland in the year of Our Lord, 1631 Left penniless and destitute by her widowed father's untimely death, young Irish Catholic girl, Erin O'Connor is forced to take up a position as maid to a Protestant English settler family in a fishing village attached to the town of Baltimore in County Cork. There she meets James Pallow, a local settler fisherman and fellow orphan, who is destined to steal her heart. Erin and James have just begun to 'walk out' together - but before their romance can truly blossom it is cruelly cut short when they and over 100 of their fellow villagers are kidnapped by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers to be sold in the slave market. Erin, along with Alice and Anna - two other young virgins from the village - is destined for the Constantinople harem of the vicious and sadistic Sultan, Murad IV, where they are forced to accept training in erotic arts that are totally alien to their sheltered lives. They also fall prey to harem intrigue which results in desolation and tragic loss of life. Separated from their loved ones, James and some of the younger Baltimore men are sent to slave in an Algiers rock quarry, where seemingly, the only escape possible comes with death and a final journey to the lime pits. The story is based on an actual event that saw 107 men, women and children torn from their Irish homeland and destined never to return to their Land of Lost Content