A haunting, elegant exploration of loss, grief and hope.
A stranger bursts into a riverside pub, his face torn apart, bearing a dead child in his arms. When the child stirs and breathes, it's a miracle, and everyone who sees her, no matter their age or situation, longs to comfort and look after her.
Over the next year fate and the child bring a host of strangers together to work out not only who she is but to heal from their own loss, tragedy and fear. A young couple grieving the disappearance of their child two years before, a poor, beaten woman haunted by guilt, a family hiding the truth about their eldest son from each other and themselves, a widowed photographer and a midwife, so terrified by childbirth she can't allow herself to love all find their lives entwining as three of them lay claim to the child. Is she Amelia, Alice or Ann- or is she someone, something, else entirely?
Each character's story would be enough to build a book on its own, weaved together they create a gorgeous tapestry set in Victorian England at a time when science and superstition collide. This unsettling, gothic, otherworldly book is touching, absorbing and beautifully written.
A stranger bursts into a riverside pub, his face torn apart, bearing a dead child in his arms. When the child stirs and breathes, it's a miracle, and everyone who sees her, no matter their age or situation, longs to comfort and look after her.
Over the next year fate and the child bring a host of strangers together to work out not only who she is but to heal from their own loss, tragedy and fear. A young couple grieving the disappearance of their child two years before, a poor, beaten woman haunted by guilt, a family hiding the truth about their eldest son from each other and themselves, a widowed photographer and a midwife, so terrified by childbirth she can't allow herself to love all find their lives entwining as three of them lay claim to the child. Is she Amelia, Alice or Ann- or is she someone, something, else entirely?
Each character's story would be enough to build a book on its own, weaved together they create a gorgeous tapestry set in Victorian England at a time when science and superstition collide. This unsettling, gothic, otherworldly book is touching, absorbing and beautifully written.