It is 1650 and a baby lies raw and cold, dead before it even drew breath. A young servant girl, terrified and alone, is accused of its murder and sent to the gallows. Protesting her innocence in the chill air of a December morning, Anne Green is hanged. Moments later her lifeless body is lifted down from the scaffold and carried to the College of Physicians for brutal dissection.
But as Anne's corpse lies on the table and the doctors assemble, a strange rattle is heard in her throat. Against all the odds, could she still be alive?
MARY HOOPER says, "When I heard Anne Green's story on the car radio, I was absolutely captivated. I went straight home to find out more about her. What a story hers was: she gave birth in the most primitive conditions, then was thrown into a freezing, stinking prison and, later, sentenced to death. She said a said farewell to her family, climbed the scaffold, and then . . . what? Anne was 'dead' for several hours. Where did she go? I immersed myself in the facts, then sat down at my computer. I pictured her in her coffin; I felt I knew what she would want to say. My fingers began to fly across the keys . . ." Mary Hooper has written more than 60 books for children and young adults, earning high praise as well as the North East Book Award for her YA novel, Megan. She has two grown children and lives with her husband Richard in Oxfordshire, England, the same area Anne Green came from.