The Glittering Strand: A triumphant story of a young woman's fight for independence

Spiced with the colour and sensuous splendour of the sixteenth-century silk trade, The Glittering Strand is the triumphant story of a young woman's fight for independence.

Serafina Guardi and her father, a wealthy silk merchant from Marseilles, are sailing to Italy to celebrate her betrothal when their ship is captured by Barbary corsairs. Serafina finds herself plunged into the unknown, brutal world of the North African slave states. From there, she beings the long struggle to free herself from servitude.

Serafina's wit and beauty are tempered by her ruthlessness - a ruthlessness which eventually threatens to lose her both her lover and her child. Embattled by the prejudices of the age and by the ambitions of her treacherous cousin Angelo, Serafina fights against poverty, loneliness and despair, vowing to regain her lost inheritance - the Guardi silk house - at whatever cost.