Dark Fortune
Whitby, Yorkshire, 1861, after her fisherman father is injured in a storm, teenage Lina Raw must leave school and scavenge on the beach to make a living. Anything to avoid the horror of the workhouse, where her family would be separated. Things go from bad to worse, and Lina ends up sentenced to hard labour in the county gaol. But Lina is determined to turn her life around. Whitby’s steep cliffs, crowded with workshops, sheds and tenements, come to life as Lina takes any work she can get, to keep her family together.
The harshness of Victorian poverty is the backdrop to a story that is firmly anchored in a sense of place, with Whitby’s jet jewellery industry a prominent part of the story. The book is written for young adults, and, I’d say, is aimed at the younger end of this group. Plot lines involving disability, drug addiction, sex and prostitution are delicately handled.
In the middle section of the book, the sheer number of different jobs that Lina tackles begins to look like a list from a textbook on economic history. But the story is clearly written, has a happy ending, and brings Victorian Whitby vividly to life.
