Fallen Grace
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's Books
The Unwin family epitomise Victorian respectability: George Unwin owns London's largest undertaker and his cousin, Sylvester, monopolises the supply of fashionable mourning clothes.
Grace, on the other hand, is desperately poor, struggling to support her sister and evade the workhouse – she has also had an illegitimate child.
But when Grace becomes an Unwin employee she discovers that dark secrets fester beneath their respectable veneer: the Unwins have already blighted her life – and are scheming to do so again.
Don’t be deterred by this morbid-sounding synopsis! Brimming with fascinating insights into the Victorian obsession with bereavement, and shocking details of a society divided by extremes of wealth and poverty, indomitable, determined Grace is an wonderfully likeable heroine in this absorbing historical cliffhanger.
