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Calcutta, 1857. A mute, scarred woman is carried through the streets on a pallet. The lone survivor, they whisper, of the massacre at Cawnpore.
Her name is Annie Meade. And she must find her way home.
The following year, veiled in widow's weeds, Annie steps back onto English soil to reclaim the son she has not held for eleven years. But outside the walls of his Shrewsbury school she falters. How can a broken woman, her face still marked by a bayonet's slash, present herself to a boy who barely remembers her?
An unexpected letter offers refuge. At Knightwych Hall, the country seat of a distant relation, Annie is drawn into a household seething beneath its polished surface: a genial master she must not love, a young mistress nursing dark secrets whose cruelty becomes impossible to ignore, and a watchful cook who whispers that the scarred newcomer is a poisoner.
And when Annie is at last brought face to face with the young man they call her son, a quiet doubt begins to grow. Is he truly her Arthur?
Anchored in Annie's own luminous journal, Annie Meade is a richly imagined Victorian novel of trauma, survival, and grace.
Her name is Annie Meade. And she must find her way home.
The following year, veiled in widow's weeds, Annie steps back onto English soil to reclaim the son she has not held for eleven years. But outside the walls of his Shrewsbury school she falters. How can a broken woman, her face still marked by a bayonet's slash, present herself to a boy who barely remembers her?
An unexpected letter offers refuge. At Knightwych Hall, the country seat of a distant relation, Annie is drawn into a household seething beneath its polished surface: a genial master she must not love, a young mistress nursing dark secrets whose cruelty becomes impossible to ignore, and a watchful cook who whispers that the scarred newcomer is a poisoner.
And when Annie is at last brought face to face with the young man they call her son, a quiet doubt begins to grow. Is he truly her Arthur?
Anchored in Annie's own luminous journal, Annie Meade is a richly imagined Victorian novel of trauma, survival, and grace.