About the Book
Wales, 1682. Rhys ap Hywel is a man of the land — stubborn, proud, and bound by centuries of tradition. When a brutal act of injustice strips him of everything he holds dear, he faces an impossible choice: submit to a world that has no place for him, or risk the unknown waters of the Atlantic and the promise of a new life in the Virginia colony.
Meg Llewelyn has survived on her wits since childhood. Sharp-tongued and fiercely independent, she boards the same creaking vessel not out of hope, but out of desperation. She wants nothing to do with Rhys ap Hywel — and yet fate has other plans.
Weeks at sea. Storms, sickness, and the slow unraveling of everything familiar. By the time the Virginia shore appears on the horizon, Rhys and Meg are no longer the people who left Wales. What they carry with them — the grief, the secrets, the fragile new bond between them — will shape a bloodline for generations to come.
The Crossing is a sweeping historical fiction novel of courage, loss, love, and survival — rooted in meticulous research into seventeenth-century Welsh life, the brutal realities of Atlantic passage, and the raw, dangerous world of early colonial Virginia.
Read the Opening Pages
The ship groaned like a living thing as Rhys ap Hywel gripped the rail and watched the grey smudge of Wales disappear into the morning mist. He had not wept when they took the farm. He had not wept at the magistrate's court, nor when his brother turned his face away. He would not weep now. But his hands — his hands would not stop shaking.
Behind him, the deck was crowded with the dispossessed: families clutching bundles, men with hollow eyes, a few who still carried the look of people who believed they had chosen this. Rhys had not chosen it. He had been pushed, step by step, until the only ground left beneath his feet was the heaving timber of the Constance, bound for Virginia.
"You'll want to move back from the rail," said a voice beside him. "The spray'll soak you through before we're past the headland."
He turned. A woman — young, dark-haired, with eyes the colour of the sea on a cloudy day — was watching him with an expression that was not quite sympathy and not quite amusement. She had a shawl pulled tight around her shoulders and a bundle at her feet that she kept one foot pressed against, as if she expected someone to steal it.
"I'm aware of the spray," Rhys said.
"Then you're choosing to be wet," she said, and looked back at the water. "Suit yourself."
— From Chapter One of The Crossing
Read More on AmazonWhat Readers Are Saying
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"A sweeping, beautifully researched novel. I couldn't put it down. Rhys and Meg feel utterly real — flawed, brave, and unforgettable."
"Phillips brings seventeenth-century Wales to life with extraordinary detail. The Atlantic crossing sequences are harrowing and magnificent."
"I read it in two sittings. The kind of historical fiction that makes you feel like you've lived another life entirely."
Begin the journey.
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