A Christmas Promise
This Dickensian tale begins in 1895 London, a poor young girl of eight anxiously searching for Charlie, her uncle’s donkey. Uncle Alf, a rag and bones man, has been brutally murdered, his donkey and cart missing. When thirteen-year-old maid, Gracie Phipps, stumbles across Minnie Maud Mudway on a street corner in London’s East End, she joins the distraught girl on her quest to find the animal who offers comfort in Minnie Maud’s meager life.
A small gold coffin is the key to the mystery, a Pandora’s box revealing a trail of lies, a heartbreaking addiction and an opportunistic murderer. A tragic story turns to one of hope as Gracie and Minnie Maud brave the perilous streets of Victorian London in search of Charlie. London holds no safe places for such children, with the exception of Mr. Balthasar, who saves the girls from grave danger in time to deliver a precious treasure to a glorious Christmas Eve celebration. Gracie, a familiar character in the author’s Victorian mystery series starring Charlotte and Thomas Pitt, is a fresh new heroine in this uplifting novel.
