The Breathing Engine

About this book

Sheffield, 1864. Josiah Hague is forty-one, a dry fork grinder, and in his trade that makes him an old man. The dust from his stone has buried every lad he was apprenticed beside, and he has long since made his peace with following them. Then on the night of 11 March the Dale Dyke dam gives way. The flood tears his wheel off the Loxley and drowns the whole family of his apprentice, fourteen-year-old Tom Bramall. Josiah takes the furious, quick-handed boy into his lodging and into a trade that will kill him. A machine from Leeds might keep the dust from Tom's lungs, but the union Josiah has served for twenty years will not allow it, and he still keeps a secret about what he once did for that union. To save the boy, how much of himself must he give away?