On Bermuda’s rocky coast, an escaped convict discovers that freedom offers little comfort when there is nowhere to hide and nothing to eat. Aaron Trow has fled imprisonment, but the surrounding sea keeps him trapped on the island. Exhausted and desperate, he approaches an isolated cottage, where a young woman is spending the evening alone.
Anastasia Bergen has always felt safe in her quiet home. When the stranger demands food, she gives him what she can. But his hunger is only part of the danger. He also wants money, and her inability to provide it turns their encounter into a terrifying struggle. Her courage becomes her strongest defence against a man who believes he has nothing left to lose.
For Anastasia’s fiancé, Caleb Morton, the attack awakens feelings that challenge everything he believes about himself. A peaceful Presbyterian minister, he now faces an anger that neither his faith nor his gentle habits have prepared him to control. As the search for Trow moves towards the island’s caves and treacherous shoreline, the desire to protect someone he loves becomes entangled with a thirst for revenge.
In Aaron Trow, Anthony Trollope combines a tense pursuit with an unsettling examination of human behaviour. Beneath the danger lies a difficult question: what happens when fear and suffering push people beyond their familiar limits? This short tale explores courage, cruelty, and the uneasy boundary between seeking justice and surrendering to hatred.
courage, cruelty, and the uneasy boundary between seeking justice and surrendering to hatred.