Frances Kane's Fortune

In a sunlit June garden, Frances Kane tends to her father's crumbling estate with quiet determination. She is twenty-three, practical, and burdened: the family fortune has vanished, the estate is in decay, and she has taken on responsibilities that should belong to a son. When a letter arrives, one she cannot yet bring herself to read, her father announces that a young girl called Fluff, daughter of a deceased family friend, will come to live with them. But the real upheaval is Philip Arnold, a past love who has reentered Frances's life, forcing her to confront everything she has buried: her grief, her longing, and the choice between duty and desire that may define the rest of her days. L. T. Meade writes with sharp observation about the particular prison of Victorian womanhood: the expectations placed on women to be selfless, economical, and endlessly forgiving, even when the world offers them nothing in return. This is a novel about the cost of keeping a family together when the odds, and the finances, are stacked against you. For readers who cherish Victorian novels about complicated women who refuse to be saints.