Set in Victorian England, this is a thought-provoking and shocking
debut story for teenagers and adults of how a young woman with an
ambition to become a doctor (at a time when it was frowned upon for
women to have such thoughts) is sent away and incarcerated in an asylum
for mentally ill women.
In Wildthorn Hall Louisa is stripped of all she knows, including her
own name. But refusing to be cowed by the regime, she uses her time to
recall and record the story of how she was betrayed by those around
her. And, surprisingly, she also finds great friendship and love.
Louisa tells her story in intertwining strands from the past and the
present.
They strip her naked, of everythingundo her whalebone corset, hook by hook. Locked away in Wildthorn Halla madhousethey take her identity. She is now called Lucy Childs. She has no one; she has nothing. But, she is still seventeenstill Louisa Cosgrove, isn't she? Who has done this unthinkable deed? Louisa must free herself, in more ways than one, and muster up the courage to be her true self, all the while solving her own twisted mystery and falling into an unconventional love . . .Originally published in the UK, this well-paced, provocative romance pushes on boundariesboth literal and figurativeand, do beware: it will bind you, too.
Born firmly in the last century, too late to make the most of the swinging
sixties, I was an 'Essex girl.' But I have lived in the north for so many years
now, my loyalties and ties are here.
I have come late to taking my
writing seriously. After teaching English in secondary schools for long enough,
I decided something had to be done while there was still time. In my work, I'm a
Jekyll and Hyde, veering between the lightness of stories for children, which I
enjoy hugely, (my inner child is about four, I reckon) and fiction for adults,
in which I seem to produce atmospheres of menace and unease.
