Innocent: Her Fancy and His Fact

Briar Farm is a sanctuary of wildflowers and wandering animals, a place where the young woman known as Innocent has lived her entire life under the care of the aging farmer Hugo Jocelyn. She knows nothing of birth or blood, only the rhythms of the seasons and the quiet affection of Robin, the farmhand whose heart belongs to her. But secrets have a way of surfacing, and when the truth of Innocent's origins emerges from the shadows of the past, everything she believed about herself crumbles. She is illegitimate a birthmark that Edwardian England refuses to let her forget. Corelli, the era's most controversial novelist, weaves a tale that is part pastoral romance, part fierce indictment of the cruelty society inflicts on children born outside marriage. Through Innocent's journey toward self-knowledge, she plants her flag: the shame belongs not to the child, but to the world that creates and then punishes her. This is melodrama with teeth, a novel that dared to name what polite society buried.