Memory Bones

I was fascinated by the daily treasure hunt ... There were memories in those stones. Memories of another age, another time, when creatures that seemed like impossible dreams had lived on the earth. In the earliest years of the nineteenth century, as Napoleon Bonaparte's war ships patrol the English coastline, Mary Anning spends her days scouring the cliffs near her Dorset home. She looks for the fossilised remains of long-vanished sea creatures to sell to the gentry for money to feed her stricken family. Her beloved father, once a thriving cabinet-maker, is now broken in body and spirit and her mother has lost too many children to poverty and ill-fortune to love those who remain. Only Mary seems to have the determination and passion to find a way to save them all.