The Ironmaster

Newcastle, 1908. Turning down a proposal of marriage from her older employer is perhaps the first mistake in Ellie Martin’s young life. Leaving the professor and running back to a family in trouble is the second.

A new beginning awaits them in Durham, but at what cost? Her mother, with a dark secret in her past, mysteriously obtains jobs for her men in an iron foundry – and Ellie finds the magic she dreams of with Adam, son of the ironmaster of ill repute.

However, the hatred harboured by Ellie’s mother for the Rockwells leads Ellie to believe that she is in love with her half-brother. And so she returns to Newcastle and tries to ignore her heart. Then Adam goes to war. But will love save the day?

Hardcover review
An epic novel with all the hallmarks of the classical saga; one family's collision with pit closures and the subsequent upheaval when relocating from Newcastle to Durham to work in an iron foundry. It's also the story of a young woman who wants more from life than just getting by - intelligent Ellie Martin, a coal miner's daughter, values respectability and wealth, but most of all she hankers after true love and romance, ideas which are none too practical in her strained circumstances and which are met with little tolerance by her struggling family.

But "The Iron Master" encompasses far more than that. Ellie sticks to her guns and turns down a convenient offer of marriage, and after the gentle first chapter Ms Gadsby takes the reader on a journey of betrayal, deception, and intrigue. The story has it all: skeletons in the closets aplenty, characters who are either wicked or self-serving or sexually obsessed, a setting depicting a gruelling and degrading level of poverty, pain and guilt walking hand in hand with kindness and honour.

A heart-rending story from beginning to end, beautifully crafted, and completely enthralling