The Ash-Sifter of Battle Bridge

About this book

London, 1851. Nineteen-year-old Tamsin Rook sifts cinders in a dust-yard at Battle Bridge, where the city's ash is sold to make the yellow bricks of its new houses. She has a secret: when she lays her palm on ash, she hears what the fire heard. Then her employer, the dust contractor Silas Gedge, sees what her hands can do. London, 1940. Kit Sayer, a twenty-year-old conscientious objector, digs bodies and survivors out of the Blitz rubble for a rescue party that despises him. He has the same secret, and in a collapse the bricks tell him where the living are breathing. Using it could save lives. It could also hand him, as it once handed his great-grandmother, to men who know exactly what such a gift is worth. Two young people, ninety years apart, must decide who gets to use what they hear.