1857, Cawnpore: With savage mutineers laying relentless siege to its very gates, the British garrison at Cawnpore, in the north of pre-partitioned India, holds on with little more than will. A ragged band of exhausted soldiers defending some 400 frightened women and hungry children in a crumbling outpost, they wait behind frail mud walls, under a scorching sun, for the uncertain arrival of relief troops.Meticulously researched and historically accurate, Stuart&’s tragic story from the Indian Mutiny resonates in the struggles against religious fanaticism of our own time. Intense and inspiring, it describes the heroism of a handful of British soldiers and civilians who confronted swarms of vengeful sepoys and all but hopeless odds, as seen through the eyes of Stuart&’s characters, Sheridan and his wife Emmy.