Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure
1883
Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure
1883
London's East End produces its own fauna, none more resilient than the street Arabs who sleep in doorways and scavenge for survival. When Diana Brandon's pony bolts and injures Bobby Frog, a street-hardened boy with a mouth like a frog, two worlds collide. Bobby's family exists in the shadow of domestic violence and social neglect, while Diana's wealthy father Sir Richard Brandon initially views the poor with aristocratic disdain. But compassion, once kindled, proves as unstoppable as the runaway pony that started it all. Bobby and his fellow street child find themselves given something no orphan in Victorian London ever expects: a ticket to Canada and a chance to become something more than another statistic of poverty. Ballantyne, the adventure novelist behind The Coral Island, crafts a story that understands the preciousness of youthful resilience and the transforming power of seeing the humanity in those society has discarded. The dusty diamonds of the title are the rough, streetwise children whose inner worth awaits only opportunity to shine.
