The Girl from Old Nichol

More about the book

Gladys Tunner is born in the rough East End of London in 1829. Her parents are alcoholics, and when sheas a teen they try to sell her to their landlord. Gladys runs, leaving behind her only protectors: Toughie, an orphan, and Sally, a kind midwife. She lands in the countryside town of Dover, where she earns a living as a maid and a barmaid and dreams of being a governess. She also has the unlikely fortune to be romantically pursued by an aristocrat, only to experience the frustrating limitations of her class status. She must work to elude the capricious hand of fate, or die as she began, a pauper in a London slum.