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Dubray Review

It’s 1914 and Grace Campbell has come to London with her brother Michael to seek a better life.  She plans to work as a secretary but, when she finds no suitable position, she takes a job as third housemaid in a mansion in Park Lane, while her brother finds work as a clerk in a solicitor’s office.  The house in Park Lane is home to the Masters family. The young debutante Beatrice, recovering from a broken heart, only vaguely notices Grace as the housemaid goes about her daily duties.   Encouraged by an estranged aunt, Beatrice seeks distraction in the suffragette movement. As the war ends and a new era dawns, the lives of these two determined women are about to change forever.  From the author of The Bolter, this enthralling novel is perfect for lovers of Downton Abbey.

- Aileen Smyth, Dubray Books Rathmines

Description

London, February 1914. Eighteen year-old Grace Campbell arrives in London from Carlisle, her family's hopes pinned on her becoming a secretary. The only job she can find is as a housemaid in the mansion that is Number 35, Park Lane, and soon she is entangling herself in an ever-thickening web of lies. Upstairs, a jilted and humiliated Beatrice Masters is determined not to return to the New York of her childhood before she has salvaged her pride. She secretly joins Emmeline Pankhurst's militant suffragettes and is steadily drawn into the violence rocking the city. But Grace and Beatrice's existences are not as parallel as they seem. Little do they realize that their hidden lives and emotions will soon be revolving around the same man - or that the coming war will change the boundaries of both their worlds forever.

Reviews

Praise for The Bolter 'A tragic and deeply moving tale ... far more gripping than any novel I have read for years' -- Antony Beevor Praise for The Bolter 'Frances Osborne has brilliantly captured not only one woman's life but an entire lost society' -- Amanda Foreman Praise for The Bolter 'An enthralling account of a dazzling, troubled life' -- Julian Fellowes