The Floating Theatre

Reviews / Votes

An engaging story with lovely detail and moments of comedy * The Daily Mail * The Floating Theatre is both a dear love story and a page-turning adventure about the Underground Railroad-and an unwilling participant. An extraordinary cast of memorable characters gives this book irresistible appeal while the setting on the watery boundary between North and South places them in dangerous and morally ambiguous territory. A captivating, thoughtful and unforgettable read. -- Kathleen Grissom, author of <i>The Kitchen House</i> and <i>Glory over Everything</i> Martha Conway, award-winning US author of 12 Bliss Street and Thieving Forest, explores the complex moral dilemmas of slavery, compromise and betrayal in a powerful and gripping novel of ideas, emotions and dramas. The Floating Theatre is an ingenious production, a gripping, atmospheric adventure story, packed with secrets and treachery, but with flashes of leavening light humour and with a strident anti-slavery message at its moral heart...a fascinating, gritty and enlightening glimpse of the realities of life on the showboats in the early to mid-19th century, the terrible plight of slaves in the southern states and the risks taken by all those determined to fight for the cause of freedom. * Lancashire Evening Post * Set in 1837 and shy seamstress May Bedloe takes on a job on the wondrous Floating Theatre, a flat boat that sails the Ohio river performing plays to townsfolk. But the reappearance of a couple from May's past threatens everything she has worked for * The Bookseller * It is part of Martha Conway's gift as a writer to weave stories from the richest and most interesting periods of American history. Set on a nineteenth century floating theatre on the Ohio River, The Floating Theatre is a riveting and atmospheric novel about slavery, betrayal and redemption, with a memorably forthright heroine, and a plot as fast flowing and twisty as the river itself. -- Louisa Treger, author of <i>The Lodger</i>