Dumps - a Plain Girl
1905
Rachel Grant has been called "Dumps" for so long she's begun to believe it. Plainer than her brothers, lonelier than she'd like to admit, she navigates the peculiar grief of a household haunted by her dead mother's absence and complicated by a new stepmother she cannot bring herself to love. When her father ships her off to a French boarding school, Rachel proceeds to make exactly the kinds of mistakes that confirm her worst fears about herself: she breaks rules, embarrasses herself, and proves through sheer clumsiness that she is exactly as unremarkable as she's always feared. But illness has a way of stripping away pretense. When her father grows dangerously ill, Rachel must choose between the safety of resentment and the terrifying vulnerability of forgiveness. L. T. Meade, writing at the height of her fame as "the queen of the girls' story," delivers a quiet masterpiece about the painful work of growing up and the radical possibility of being truly seen.
