SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION'Utterly absorbing, cleverly constructed and beautifully written' The Times'Moving and exhilarating' Spectator 'Evokes the messiness and fragility of everyday life in the nineteenth century' Daily MailAlmost two hundred years ago, Abraham, an illiterate urchin, scavenges on a Suffolk beach and dreams of running away to sea ... Naomi, a seventeen-year-old seamstress, imagines a new life in the big city ... George, a