Nettlefield

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1864: Thomas Mandeville, a priest searching for faith, finds instead Michael Dashwood, a whore searching for oblivion in the worst opium den in London. Quiet, incendiary truths burn between them in Thomas’s London home, where he nurses Michael back to health, even as he’s increasingly undone by the discovery that he desires him, finds his faith in him, loves him. The third son of the Marquess of Montrose, Thomas has surrendered his dreams to his father’s expectations. But with one brother dead and the other shattered by the horrors of the Crimean War, dreams seem futile, and crushing duty inevitable.

Abandoned by his lover, Isidore, Michael has lost his youth, his senses, his hope, to opium and prostitution. No will left but the wish to see the stars and breathe country air, Michael relents to Thomas’s wish to retreat to his country parish of Nettlefield. In the red-gold lanes of the eccentric Oxfordshire village, far from the fleshpits of Tiger Bay, the two men find a fleeting sense of intoxicating belonging and acceptance away a from larger world that has no place for them.

Nettlefield is a tale of passion and truth, and the freedom to find both.