The widow's fire explores the shadow side of Jane Austen's final novel. Persuasion, disrupting its happy ending and throwing moral certainties off balance. We join the action close to the moment when Austen discreetly gives an overview of the oncoming marriage between heroine Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. This, it transpires in the Widow's Fire, is merely the beginning of a journey. Soon dark undercurrents disturb the order and symmetry assert itself. Charcters far below the notice of Anne, a baronet's daughter, have agendas of their own. Before long, we enter into the realm of scandal and blackmail. Although Mrs. Smith is presented in Persuasion as a virtuous character, her actions from today's perspective are highly dubious. The Widow's Fire unleashes Mrs. Smith as a protagonist of dark intent who relies on espionage, blackmail, and murder, all the while portraying herself as a poor, rheumatic widow. Anyone who enjoyed Persuasion will delight in following its characters in this more modern and diabolical scenario that brings Austen's social criticism into the twenty-first century.