Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris

The 1660 Act of Oblivion pardonned all of those who took up arms against the King. Colonel Whalley fled with his son-in-law, Goff, to New England to escape death at the hands of one man, Richard Naylor, obsessed with catching them. This leads to a man-hunt spanning oceans and time and puts many people who help them at risk.

The book is very well researched and a lot of detail is included in the story so that you get the creaking of the muddy boots, the cold and trapped feeling of living in an attic and the difficulties of being in a small community of Puritans.

The book just wasn’t for me. I can appreciate all the finer qualities of it but I got bored with the chase and when I skipped ahead to the ending, it took a few paragraphs to dispatch Naylor and for Goff to live happily ever after.

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