Bess of the Woods

A tale of two worlds colliding in Sussex. Richard Jeffray, fresh from years wandering Italy, has inherited his father's estate but not his coldness. He is gentle where he should be ruthless, romantic where he should be practical, and when the local gentry gather to assess their new neighbor, Richard escapes to the wild woods of Pevense instead. There he finds Bess Grimshaw: fierce, wild, raised among forest-folk with a foster mother named Ursula. She is everything his world rejects and everything his soul craves. But Richard is already betrothed to a calculating older woman who sees his estate as her prize, and a smallpox epidemic sweeps the countryside, threatening everyone he now loves. This is a story about what happens when a man too good for his world meets a woman born outside it. Deeping writes with atmospheric richness about the Sussex countryside and the invisible walls we build between ourselves.