Aaron Mew is a seventeen year-old apprentice blacksmith living in a small English village, in the late eighteenth century. His life is simple yet secure, until the day when he volunteers to take the place of his father on an errand for the squire. The country boy is wrenched from the environment in which he grew up and thrust into a world of ruffians, drunks, criminals and disgraced professionals – the army of George III. An army desperately short of men, but with the huge ambition to quell the rebellion in America and to retain the country under British rule.
After relentless training, Aaron’s regiment, the 62nd Regiment of Foot, is posted to Canada. There, fighting side by side with Indian braves and German allies, the boy soldier becomes a hardened warrior. He finds honour, though no glory, true comradeship and eventually, love.
The Wessex Turncoat tells the story of a doomed army and a regiment which is decimated at the battle of Saratoga, mainly because of the vanity and intransigence of an English general. The failure of the military campaign led ultimately to the end of British rule in America.