Mr American

In 1909 Mark Franklin arrives in England aboard the Mauretania carrying an old saddle, two revolvers and the fortune he made from Nevada silver. He travels to the West Country to investigate his family origins and purchases a country estate, where his quiet competence and American directness make him both attractive and unsettling to neighbours accustomed to class ritual.

Franklin encounters music-hall performer Pip Delys, militant suffragism, Edwardian aristocrats and the elderly Harry Flashman, who recognises a fellow survivor beneath the newcomer’s reserve. Meanwhile men from Franklin’s Western past arrive with unfinished business. The novel places a self-made frontier figure inside a society approaching constitutional crisis and world war, asking whether reinvention can ever be complete.