A young woman is dragged into prison for passing counterfeit coins, and the reader is left wondering: is she a criminal, a victim, or something far more complicated? Edith Allandale has lost everything: her father, her brothers, her fortune. Now she faces the crushing poverty of Victorian England with nothing but her determination to care for her ailing mother. When an innocent-seeming transaction at a pawnbroker's leads to her arrest, Edith finds herself at the mercy of a society quick to judge and slow to forgive. But as the walls close in, she discovers her family's hidden past may hold secrets that explain everything, or nothing at all. Victorian sensation fiction at its most entertaining: a woman wrongfully accused, a web of family secrets, and the constant question of who she really is beneath the masks society forces her to wear.
