Chris Winterterton

Folk Chris Winterterton

There's only one way to play a burning piano, as though each note may be your last. In the face of death Milton will finally learn to give himself completely to life and it will take the seduction of a whole city by a foreign troupe of carnival misfits to bring it all burning down. Folk will dance in the devils playground where the line between the righteous and the corrupt is obscured by sand and sawdust. It was like snatching at smoke to imagine where it had all started for Milton; the world had felt smaller then. Before enigmatic Coney Island carnival man Harry Bailey arrived on the docks with his French Roma carnival folk in tow. Before he learned a lie about the truth. Eden Park amusement carnival opens its massive grinning gates for the first time. Eighty-thousand coloured globes light up the seaside town of Fareham like never before. Provocative music, bizarre animals, exotic women, freak shows and vaudevillian marvels herald a new era of escape to the multitudes. But here's the rub, the carnival also harbors a darker culture that promises to satisfy clientele of a more debauched nature. Illicit alcohol, gamblers, prostitution, drugs and organised crime permeate the soft underbelly of the town. This is the story of a city balancing on a knife's edge of tension. Only when the fog lifts and the smoke clears will they be able to see the damage done.