The Beggar Man

Faith Ledley is slight and timid, with soft brown eyes that give away every emotion. Working in a blouse factory, she exists in a world of long hours and slender wages, until a chance encounter with the enigmatic Nicholas Forrester sets her life on an unexpected trajectory. Their romance is whirlwind, desperate, intoxicating - the kind that leaves a young woman without family or fortune little time to ask what she truly knows about the man she's marrying. When the truth emerges that Nicholas played some part in her father's ruin, Faith must reckon with the wreckage of her own naivety. It's a story that knows exactly what it is: a tear-stained melodrama of 1920s working-class life, where love arrives like a thunderclap and consequences arrive just as quickly. Ayres writes with genuine tenderness about the vulnerabilities of young women caught between poverty and the promises of charming strangers.