When published by St Martin's Press in New York and Piatkus in London, in 1990. The book attracted the following notices:
• By far the best of his West Country sagas ... a highly unusual profile of a woman of those times — Eastern Evening News
• Macdonald succeeds wonderfully in capturing the feeling of Cornish village life, including its broad, rich humour. The legion of Winston Graham's Poldark fans will find, if they have not already done so, that Malcolm Ross is a worthy successor — The West Briton
• Misunderstandings bred by jealousy and an attempted kidnapping further animate [this] robust romance, which handily evokes the natural landscape of Cornwall and the dialect and class distinctions of its inhabitants — Publishers Weekly
• He is every bit as bad as Dickens – Martin Seymour-Smith
