My Young Alcides: A Faded Photograph
1875
A faded photograph opens a wound Lucy Alison has spent years trying to forget. Her father's twin sons from an earlier marriage were transported to the colonies for their revolutionary activities, a disgrace that haunts the Alison family. Now, after the twins' brother dies, his sons arrive at Lucy's door: Eustace and the boy called "young Alcides" (a reference to Hercules himself). Society has already judged them as wild, dangerous, the product of criminal stock. Lucy braces for the worst. But Harold Alcides is not what rumor promised. He is enormous, yes, physically imposing enough to seem almost mythic. Yet he carries himself with unexpected gentleness and refinement. As Lucy navigates her complicated feelings toward these disinherited nephews, she must reconcile the prejudice she was raised to feel with the actual person standing before her. Yonge's novel is a quiet examination of how quickly we judge based on inheritance and reputation, and how dangerous it is to mistake a family's sins for an individual's character. It asks whether redemption is possible when society has already rendered its verdict.
