The Bell Family

Irish Secrets and Lies
Newcastle upon Tyne, 1870s

She came from nothing but shame and silence. He could sell anything — except the truth about his own heart.

Martha Lowery flees her Irish family’s smallholding in Hexham with little more than her baking skills and a fierce will to survive. Haunted by the dark secrets of her childhood and a father whose cruelty drove her from home, working as a cook and cleaner. She hopes only for safety. Respectability seems far beyond reach.

Then she meets John “JB” Sutherland.

Charming, ambitious, and born into a brewing family on the banks of the River Tyne, JB has dreams far bigger than the smoky barrooms of Newcastle. With his brother Daniel, he plans to expand the family trade and build a brewery that will carry their beer across Tyneside. Martha is unlike any woman he has known—sharp, determined, and carrying secrets of her own.

Their passion leads to a child born out of wedlock—little John Thomas Sutherland—a scandal that could destroy them both.

At the heart of their future stands The Barley Mow, the bustling Tyneside pub run by JB’s ageing father and his formidable wife, Alice Curry. They are not ready to hand the business to a son who hesitates to marry the mother of his child—nor to a young woman whose past feels shadowed and suspicious. As family tensions simmer, whispers grow louder. Someone close to the Sutherlands knows the truth about Martha’s father… and the shame she has fought so hard to escape.

But Martha is not alone.

She forms an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth, a mysterious healer with a past as dangerous as Martha’s own—a woman who fled Barbados after killing the husband who abused her. Elizabeth teaches Martha to read, to think beyond survival, and to understand the quiet power women can wield in a world built to silence them.