num_pages: 356
description: From acclaimed author Ellen Marie Wiseman comes a vivid daring novel about the devastating power of family secrets--beginning in the poignant lurid world of a Depression-era traveling circus and coming full circle in the transformative 1950s. On a summer evening in 1931 Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom. Lilly isn't allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She's never even ventured beyond her narrow room. Momma insists it's for Lilly's own protection that people would be afraid if they saw her. But on this unforgettable night Lilly is taken outside for the first time--and sold to the circus sideshow. More than two decades later nineteen-year-old Julia Blackwood has inherited her parents' estate and horse farm. For Julia home was an unhappy place full of strict rules and forbidden rooms and she hopes that returning might erase those painful memories. Instead she becomes immersed in a mystery involving a hidden attic room and photos of circus scenes featuring a striking young girl. At first The Barlow Brothers' Circus is just another prison for Lilly. But in this rag-tag sometimes brutal world Lilly discovers strength friendship and a rare affinity for animals. Soon thanks to elephants Pepper and JoJo and their handler Cole Lilly is no longer a sideshow spectacle but the circus's biggest attraction. . .until tragedy and cruelty collide. It will fall to Julia to learn the truth about Lilly's fate and her family's shocking betrayal and find a way to make Blackwood Manor into a place of healing at last. Moving between Julia and Lilly's stories Ellen Marie Wiseman portrays two extraordinary very different women in a novel that while tender and heartbreaking offers moments of joy and indomitable hope.
language: English
title: The Life She Was Given: A Moving and Emotional Saga of Family and Resilient Women
publisher: Kensington