On his first aborted trip from the twenty first century into 1746, Ethan Caplin, fourteen, meets and falls in love with sixteen year old Eveline Erskine. Imprisoned as a perceived catholic spy, injured and rendered unconscious after an attempted escape, he is helped back to his own time by Eveline who thought him mortally wounded. Disbelieved and thought mentally unstable by his family, he returns down the same spiral steps seventeen months later. He finds the village of Sandthwaite destroyed and deserted. And worse, Eveline and her father are now incarcerated in jail, in Penrith, many miles away. Accompanied by Eveline's brother Arthur, Ethan embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue them. An adventure that endangers their lives and threatens Ethan's chances of ever returning to his own time. FOLLOW ETHAN'S QUEST IN THIS EXCITING SEQUEL TO THE SPITAL STEPS