In Nell Lillington’s small Midwestern town of the 1870s, marriage is the obvious fate of a young woman of some social standing. Yet Nell is determined to elude the duties and restrictions of matrimony. So when she finds herself pregnant at the age of 17, she refuses to divulge the name of the father and even her childhood friend Martin is kept in the dark.
Nell’s stepfather Hiram sends Nell to live at the Poor Farm of which he is a governor, to await the day when her baby can be discreetly adopted. Nell is ready to go along with Hiram’s plans until an unused padded cell is opened and two small bodies fall out.
Nell is the only resident of the Poor Farm who is convinced that the unwed mother and her baby were murdered, and the incident prompts her to rethink her decision to abandon her own child to her fate. But the revelations to which her questions lead make her realize that even if she manages to escape the Poor Farm with her baby, she may have no safe place to run to.
I really enjoyed this book I really enjoyed this book. I read everything except horror and wildly futuristic novels. I have learned that when you read a book you need not to judge the decisions made by the author but put them in the circumstance of the frame of that particular story. Fiction books will stray from what the individual believes to be the “norms” of the time period but that is what I find most interesting, the mixing of what was and what could be. This author does that very well and I look…
Interesting read Although this was not my favorite book, it was a fun read. Just when you think that you know what will happen… there is a twist. There are parts that drag on that I somewhat tried yo hurry through because they weren’t very relevant to the story but still not bad.My biggest complaint is that at the end of the story I did not feel the need to read the next book in the set. I enjoyed this book, but not to the extent that I felt invested enough to read further into their story.
An Outstanding Novel Nell Lillington lived in a small Midwestern town near Chicago in the 1870’s. At the beginning of the novel, Nell is pregnant at age 17, unwed, and refused to reveal the father. Nell’s stepfather put his foot down and sent her to the ‘Poor Farm’; the Poor Farm was for unwed pregnant girls, pregnant prostitutes, for people with mentally disabilities, and for people that could not be among the public, this was a place where they could go for care. Nell’s stepfather, Hiram was hiding her out…