Clematis

A lost little girl sits on a cold city sidewalk in tattered clothes. A policeman finds her. She has no home, no family, no name anyone knows. This is Clematis, and in the early 20th century, that means the Children's Home - a place of rules, routines, and learning to belong. She arrives with nothing but a stubborn hope and a love for beautiful things: the magnificent flowers and animals she dreams of in the countryside, and later, a small gray kitten named Deborah who becomes her whole world. This gentle story follows one child's journey from abandonment to belonging, from loneliness to friendship, from the hard pavement of the city to the green fields she can almost taste. It's a quiet, tender book about resilience and the small things that make a frightened child feel like she might, eventually, have a place to call home.