Now We Shall Be Entirely Free

Our Fiction Book of the Month for June 2019 ‘The plot grips and surprises. Miller’s prose remains poetic and taut, with an eye for the telling detail… Historical or otherwise, this is fiction — storytelling — at its best.’ – The Spectator Somerset , 1809: a ravaged soldier drags himself across the threshold of his home, destined to perish were it not the efforts of his housekeeper to save him. This is Captain John Lacroix, a combatant of the Peninsular War, a man shattered by something so unspeakable his only instinct is to flee from himself. With his healing comes command to return to his regiment: instead, Lacroix chooses the Hebrides. Meanwhile, across the moors and fields follow his possible nemesis: the English corporal Calley and a Spanish officer by the name of Medina, under secret orders. An atrocity was committed on the British retreat to Corunna, and justice must be delivered. Lacroix is unaware of this fresh danger, consumed only by his blighted past and his current action of treason. Soon, the paths of these men must converge, and the moment of reckoning will be upon them all. Andrew Miller, author of Ingenious Pain and the Costa Book Award-winning Pure turns his considerable talents to a story of justice and revenge in the shadow of the Napoleonic War. Lightly wearing its considerable research, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free fuses menacing thriller and historical novel into a very contemporary examination of combat’s aftermath and its price for all involved.