I’m delighted to welcome RJ Lloyd to the blog with a guest post about his new book, Burning Secret.

I’m delighted to welcome RJ Lloyd to the blog with a guest post about his new book, Burning Secret.

Burning Secret is a true story. Well, almost. The novel blurs the lines between fact and fiction as it reconstructs the real life of Enoch Price, my great-great-grandfather, and is a story many can relate to through their ancestors and family histories. 

Set at the end of the nineteenth century, it spans the ocean from the squalor of Victorian London to the frontier town of Jacksonville, Florida, where civic life struggled to recover from the American Civil War and the end of slavery.

The novel operates on several levels: as a fast-paced thriller with plenty of derring-do, a morality tale of good vs. greed, and how life can easily corrupt the pursuit of happiness. Some have even suggested that underneath it all lies a tragic love story.

Burning Secret took eleven years to research and write, and the more I researched, the more I realised how much more I needed to explore. In 1881, Enoch was listed in the London Gazette as a bankrupt and destined for two years in the debtors’ prison, from which few emerged unscathed. Abandoning his wife and three young daughters, he made for Florida. It was here, in Jacksonville, with his newly created identity of Harry Mason, that he carved out his future, and, by hook or by crook, he amassed a fortune and became a powerful politician. While all of this time, his wife and daughters in England, entirely ignorant of his new persona, languished in poverty.

Researching Harry Mason in Florida required patience and persistent work. Some basic information came from the public records in Jacksonville and Tallahassee, where the librarians and archivists were exceptionally helpful. 

Sixteen years after stepping ashore, homeless and destitute, Harry was elected on 15 June 1897 to the Jacksonville City Council, representing the eighth ward of Ortega, Venetia and Avondale, and in 1903, was elected to the Florida State House of Representatives, where the only surviving photograph of him is archived. 

From his arrival in 1881, the Jacksonville annual trade directories trace Harry as a bartender at The European House, a bar in the Dutch style run by Nicky Arend at 80– 82 West Bay. 

Several academic records held by Florida’s universities mention his involvement in Jacksonville’s 1888 deadly outbreak of Yellow Fever. He again appears in 1901, when the city was razed to the ground by the Great Fire of Jacksonville. 

There are several public records and court transcripts, some held in the United States Library of Congress, which cite Harry as the promoter who, against fierce public opposition, brought the 1894 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship fight between Gentleman Jim Corbett and Charlie Mitchell to Jacksonville. 

His most outstanding achievement was building the Hotel Mason, at the junction of Bay and Julia Streets, Jacksonville, which opened on 31 December 1913. The largest and most opulent hotel in Florida (demolished in 1978).

Harry, aged 75 years, died on 5 November 1919 at his home, the Villa Alexandria, near the junction of River Road and Arbor Lane in the district of San Marco. The Mitchell family originally built the extensive, almost palatial, villa in the 1870s, which came into Harry’s ownership in somewhat opaque circumstances. Long after his death, the Florida Supreme Court recorded several legal challenges to his ownership. 

Indeed, based on his bigamous marriage in Jacksonville in April 1883 to Bessie Nolan, his three English daughters from his first marriage to Eliza challenged his last will in the American courts.

What an amazing story.Thank you so much for sharing.

Here’s the blurb

Inspired by actual events, Burning Secret is a dramatic and compelling tale of ambition, lies and betrayal. 

Born in the slums of Bristol in 1844, Enoch Price seems destined for a life of poverty and hardship-but he’s determined not to accept his lot. 

Enoch becomes a bare-knuckle fighter in London’s criminal underworld. But in a city where there’s no place for honest dealing, a cruel loan shark cheats him, leaving Enoch penniless and facing imprisonment. 

Undaunted, he escapes to a new life in America and embarks on a series of audacious exploits. But even as he helps shape history, Enoch is not content. Tormented by his past and the life he left behind, Enoch soon becomes entangled in a web of lies and secrets. 

Will he ever break free and find the happiness he craves? 

Influenced by real people and events, Enoch’s remarkable story is one of adventure, daring, political power, deceit and, in the end, the search for redemption and forgiveness. 

Buy Links
Universal Buy Link

Amazon UK  Amazon US Amazon CA Amazon AU

Meet the author

After retiring as a senior police officer, R J Lloyd turned his detective skills to genealogy, tracing his family history to the 16th century. However, after 15 years of extensive research, he couldn’t track down his great-great-grandfather, Enoch Price, whose wife, Eliza, had, in living memory, helped raise his mother.
It was his cousin Gillian who, after several more dead-ends, called one day to say that she had found him through a fluke encounter. Susan Sperry from California, who had recently retired, decided to explore the box of documents given to her thirty years before by her mother, which she had never opened. In the box, she found some references to her great grandfather, Harry Mason, a wealthy hotel owner from Florida who had died in 1919. It soon transpired that Susan’s great grandfather, Harry Mason, was, in fact, Enoch Price.

From this single thread, the extraordinary story of Harry Mason began to unravel, leading R J Lloyd to visit the States to meet his newly discovered American cousins, and it was Susan Sperry and Kimberly Mason, direct descendants, who persuaded R J Lloyd to write the extraordinary story of their ancestor. 

R J Lloyd graduated from the University of Warwick with a degree in Philosophy and Psychology and a Masters in Marketing from UWE. Since leaving a thirty-year career in policing, he’s been a non-executive director with the NHS, social housing, and other charities. He lives with his wife in Bristol, spending his time travelling, writing and producing delicious plum jam from the trees on his award-winning allotment. 

Connect with the author

Website Twitter Facebook

Instagram Amazon Author Page   Goodreads