The Secret Child (The Margate Maid)
This novel is about Molly, who begins her marriage to Charlie with a dark secret. The emotional turmoil she experienced haunts her throughout her married life and continues to her present day, when a young man called George Smith, whose story is much too connected to hers, arrives on the Woodchurch Manor estate in Kent where they live, looking for work after a career in the Navy.
The author conjures 1814 Kent accurately and embeds her characters successfully in that time. She describes the divide between the upper class and the working class and highlights their different social problems. For example, the working-class men of Kent are worried that they will be press-ganged into the Royal Navy to work as sailors for the goods trade. If they are captured, they have no way of warning their friends and family what has happened to them. Alternatively, the upper class have a choice to go into the Navy, but they are restricted to who they can marry because of familial obligations. The women also have a different life: if they are not married by twenty, they are considered a spinster. Overall, the author successfully paints a life that is fraught with individual difficulties, and it is up to the characters she creates to overcome their problems or take ownership of them.
