Description

“this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand.”

Mary and her three sisters rise every day to farmwork that threatens to suppress their own awakening desires, whether it’s Violet’s pull toward womanhood or Beatrice’s affinity for the Scriptures. But it’s their abusive father who stands to deliver the most harm. Only Mary dares to stand up to him. When he sends her to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife, he deals her the only blow she may not survive.

Within walking distance of her family farm, the vicarage is a world away, a curious, unsettling place. Teeming with the sexuality of the vicar’s young son and the manipulations of another servant, it is also a place of books and learning–a source of endless joy. Yet as Mary soon discovers, such precious knowledge comes at a devastating price.