Fallen Grace - Hardcover

Mary Hooper is a very popular writer for children and young adults. Mary's brilliant historical novels, At the House of the Magician, By Royal Command, The Betrayal, At the Sign of the Sugared Plum, Petals in the Ashes and The Extraordinary Life and Times of Eliza Rose, have a huge fan base, as do her contemporary novels for teenagers. Mary is very much in demand for her events at literary festivals and schools. She lives in Henley-on-Thames.

In this Dickensian read, Grace Parkes and her sister, simple Lily, have been abandoned to fate. Their mothers dead, and their father long ago disappeared. Life in a school for underprivileged girls led to pregnancy for Grace after one of the schools benefactors came to her bed. When the book opens, Grace is at the cemetery hiding the remains of the baby, who died in childbirth, in a strangers casket because she is too poor to provide a burial. There she meets a handsome young lawyer who offers his card and a shifty woman who offers her work in a funeral home. All of Dickens touchstones are here: the tightly wound connections; the greatand not-so-greatexpectations; the bumpy twists; and the detailed descriptions of life in Victorian England. The latter are particularly notable. Hooper has done her research, and she makes elements like Victorian funeral practices absolutely fascinating. The story itself moves at an energetic, page-turning clip. If at times the coincidences seem, well, too coincidental, blame Dickens. Grades 7-10. --Ilene Cooper