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.