Fallen Grace

When we first meet Grace Parks, she is a fifteen-year-old girl living in 1861 London who is just about to deliver her first child out of wedlock. Grace is orphaned, and has had to look after her sister Lily since their mother passed away. They are both poor and living in the slums, often going without food when they can't manage to make enough money selling watercress on the streets. Given she hasn't gotten enough money to feed and clothe herself and her sister, let alone a newborn baby, it is possibly an act of mercy when the midwife informs Grace that her baby was stillborn. The young girl is of course devastated, and feeling sorry for her, the midwife tells her about a way in which her baby can find proper burial in a beautiful cemetery just outside London, instead of being thrown into a communal pauper's grave. While at the cemetery, Grace will meet two individuals who will play large roles in the Parks sisters' fortunes, in the persons of the kindly James Solent, a law clerk, and Mrs Unwin, the wife of one of London's most successful undertakers, who suggests to her she has the perfect face, solemn and tragic, to be employed as a "mute", or a professional mourner, though Grace, quite put off, doesn't intend to take her up on the offer. Directly inspired by Dickens' tales—the great writer even plays a small role in the novel—and therefore peopled with wonderfully wicked characters, the novel follows the sisters as they are forced onto the London streets and have no choice but to turn to the villainous Unwins for sustenance, much as Grace dislikes the idea of making a living from the funeral industry. This line of business is about to get an incredible boost upon the death of Prince Consort Albert in December 1861, when Queen Victoria declares the nation to be in a state mourning. Probably written for a young adult readership, but who cares? it's a great yarn and worth the detour.