The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd

This far away, almost unreported event would have wide-reaching consequences as unusually bad weather conditions raised food prices and created famine around the world. In April 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted. Few had heard of Tambora - but none could escape its effects. Six separate lives, connected only by an event many thousands of miles away. The Year Without Summer is the story of the books written, the art made of the journeys taken, of the love longed for and the lives lost during that fateful year. As desperation sets in, Britain becomes racked with riots - rebellion is in the air. He flees to London, where he falls in with a group of revolutionaries who speak of a better life, whatever the cost. And Hope Peter, returned from Napoleonic war, finds his family home demolished and a fence gone up in its place. In the Fens, farm labourer Sarah Hobbs has had enough of going hungry while the farmers flaunt their wealth. In Britain, the ambitious and lovesick painter John Constable struggles to reconcile the idyllic England he paints with the misery that surrounds him. In Vermont, preacher Charles Whitlock begs his followers to keep faith as drought dries their wells and their livestock starve.

Confined inside by the unseasonable weather, thousands of famine refugees stream past her door. In Switzerland, Mary Shelley finds dark inspiration. But worse is yet to come: as the ash cloud rises and covers the sun, the seasons will fail. Once a paradise, the island is now solid ash, the surrounding sea turned to stone. Sent to investigate, ship surgeon Henry Hogg can barely believe his eyes. Mount Tambora explodes in a cataclysmic eruption, killing thousands. Lives, both ordinary and privileged, changed forever. In 1815, a supervolcanic eruption led to the extraordinary 'Year Without Summer' in 1816: a massive climate disruption causing famine, poverty and riots.

The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd