Flame-Coloured Taffeta

by Rosemary Sutcliff

First published 1986

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4.0(3)

Southern England, in the eighteenth century. Twelve-year-old Damaris Crocker lives in a coastal community where smuggling is woven into local work, secrecy and obligation. A night landing brings more than contraband ashore: the smugglers are carrying a wounded young man whose identity and purpose are deliberately concealed.

Damaris and her friends are drawn into the danger surrounding the stranger, whose presence raises the possibility of espionage as well as romance and adventure. The novel uses the practical organisation of Georgian smuggling—signals, hidden routes and divided loyalties—to turn a familiar landscape into contested ground. Damaris must decide whom to trust when neighbours treat the law, patriotism and survival as different questions.