Black-Eyed Devils

A secret love and threat of death in the hatred-filled Welsh Valleys, from the pen of Wales’ most celebrated historical writer.

One look was enough. Amy Watkins and miner ‘Big’ Tom Kelly were in love. But can they keep their feelings secret or face the threat of death in a community torn apart by the miner’s strike?

Tonypandy, South Wales, 1911. Starving, striking miners fight soldiers and police on the picket lines for the right to earn a wage that will feed their families, while Irish labourers are brought in the take their place in the pits, for half their pay.

Handsome ‘Big’ Tom Kelly, an Irish worker, comes to Wales looking for a better life and believes he has found it when he falls in love with Amy Watkins, the daughter of a strike leader.

At night, the miners search out the Irish men, drag them from their beds, beat them and then hang them from the street lamp posts.

Can Amy and Tom keep their love a secret forever? All they want is a future together. But in a world full of hatred, anger and violence, their dream seems impossible. Until another strike leader offers them a way out.

Catrin Collier is Wales’ most prolific and well-known authors of historical, romantic fictions. The daughter of a Prussian refugee and Welsh father, she grew up in Pontypridd. She has written 19 novels for Orion. Her first historical novel Hearts of Gold, was filmed as a mini-series by the BBC in 2003. She lives with her family on the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea. She also writes crime fiction under the pen name Katherine John