title: The Testing of Rose Alleyn
author: Freeman, Vivien
description: May 1900After her mother’s death in January, late in her twentieth pregnancy, sixteen-year-old Rose has resolved never to marry. Defying expectations, she has escaped the same fate as her siblings in service, and left her rural home for the market town of Widdock. Here she now works as the assistant in a bookshop owned by inspiring and charismatic Leonard Pritchard, with whom she shares a love of poetry. At Apple Tree House, where she lodges, Rose has forged strong friendships with the other young women residents and with the hostel’s cultured owner, Mrs. Fuller.Rose enjoys her independence. But as her relationship with her employer deepens, her joy is tempered by reawakening fears about the reality of women’s lives. Preoccupied, Rose is unprepared for trouble when it strikes. Coming from the least likely source, one in which she has always found solace, it threatens the very person now closest to her heart. How can words prove to be so damaging and dangerous? What can she do? As the storm gathers, will she ride it?