Hidden Hand

On a stormy Halloween night in the Virginia mountains, the notorious Major Ira Warfield, known to all as 'Old Hurricane', receives a midnight summons that will unravel his darkest secrets. But the true heart of this gothic masterpiece is Capitola Black, a sharp-witted girl who has survived by dressing as a boy and living among street urchins, because in 1850s America, a girl can starve while a boy can find work. When her wealthy guardian discovers her, Capitola is transplanted to the palatial but suffocating Hurricane Hall, where she finds herself 'decomposing above ground for want of having my blood stirred.' She won't stay still for long. Bandits, true loves, evil schemers, long-lost mothers, kidnap attempts, and thunderous confrontations await. Southworth, the most popular novelist of her era, created a character so beloved that this book was serialized three times and dramatized forty times. Capitola is pure adrenaline: clever, daring, and unapologetically alive in a world that offers women nothing. This is adventure fiction with a rebel at its center.