Hepsom

Welcome to Hepsom, the most powerful Estate in all of England. It was a Royal Gift to the Fylde family from George II for their services in founding the East India Company. In 1945, Lady Aurelia Fylde, heir to Hepsom, had a secret illegitimate son, Cassie, who was fostered out to grow up in a London suburb. Aurelia’s lover was Paul Hughes, a virile Australian who was chosen by Churchill in 1940 to use his engineering genius to build a revolutionary new gun to destroy U boats. Aurelia also had a younger son by Paul who had been raised in the North Wales Mountains and whose identity is later falsely claimed by Gareth Caesar, a bombastic, charismatic Welshman whose meteoric rise to the height of Government under Margaret Thatcher was orchestrated by Aurelia. Gareth’s true aim in life is to become Lord Hepsom for which Cassie, the true heir to Hepsom, must always be a threat. So Gareth mischievously arranged for Cassie to innocently meet Aurelia. By the 60’s, she was exhibiting signs of mental deterioration from a WW2 head wound. Cassie was now an innocent prepubescent young man, the image of his father, and her lover, Paul Hughes. So, all was set for the most intense incest that one can find in modern literature today and is forever the dominant theme of the book. When Aurelia fatally succumbed to the wound, the imposter Gareth proclaimed himself Lord Hepsom, and then, in true character, robed the Estate. Then comes the day of truth atop the summit of Mount Snowden. Hearn paints a picture of the end of a demagogue and likens it to the murder of Julius Caesar. Did he fall or was he pushed? Cassie, later visiting Las Vegas, finds that Gareth had sent his Hepsom loot to the Mafia via the still-existent ‘Northern Route’ established by the Vikings. Hearn fills the story with astounding characters akin to a Dickensian saga and explores the relationship between Brothers and Lovers. Cassie’s great love, is the divorcee Elizabeth who, after motherhood, re-entered the scientific workforce and is destined to become a leading scientist. She also turns out to be a scheming bisexual who cheats on Cassie and takes away his wonderful son, Thom. An underlying theme in our story is Cassie’s resemblance to Peter Pan in his search for a lost brother. Hearn introduces, ala Barrie, a girl called Wendy Darling who discovers Gareth’s secret inheritance fraud and, accordingly, Elizabeth attempts to rape and break her body in the darkest of dark moments. Perhaps one of Hearn’s most vivid characterisations is John Sar, school teacher, Deacon of the Chapel and genius of the Welsh mountains, who discovered the scientific principle on which Churchill based the Hughes antisubmarine gun. Hearn explores the issue of English aristocratic families putting out their children for other’s care and parentage; the cuckoo-like creation of Cassie and Gareth. He relates the horror of one of Aurelia’s chicks being hit by a VI bomb; you hear the most terrifying explosion that tears down homes and severs human heads. Aurelia dumps Paul and marries Richard LaVance who turns out to be carrying syphilis and has had a penectomy. Fertilization of a female egg by him seems difficult but nothing is truly impossible nor is cradle swapping. It alters Richard role in the legitimacy of inheritance. Paul Hughes is a libertarian in his views on sex and meets the beautiful Caroline, sex starved wife of a Cambridge professor; not far behind Paul, in the queue for (the now pregnant) Caroline’s bed, is the bisexual Aurelia. The superb story of Aurelia’s kidnapping of her own child and imitating the goddess Persephone is a masterpiece of witchcraft and worthy of becoming one of your lifelong ‘go to’ favourites. Hepsom has partially been published in episodes in the London Press and attracted master reviews.