The Jewel of Gresham Green (The Gresham Chronicles #4)
Single mother Jewel Libby has a dead-end job, day-care problems, and a pedophile for a landlord. As difficult as it would be in today’s world, Jewel’s prospects seem hopeless in 1884 in Birmingham, England, where she sews corsets in a Dickensian factory. Living in the vicarage of the picturesque dairy village of Gresham Green, writer Adela Phelps loves her big, noisy family but needs quiet to work. As she moves to a forest cottage, Jewel, concerned for the safely of her daughter, flees the city and seeks sanctuary in Gresham Green. However, evil can exist in even the most idyllic little town. Blackwell skillfully reveals the good, bad, beautiful, and ugly aspects of life in nineteenth-century England, creating a well-written, faith-based book that doesn’t get bogged down in didacticism or dogma, making it appealing to a broad audience. A nice addition to Blackwell’s Gresham Chronicles (The Widow of Larkspur Inn, 1998; The Courtship of the Vicar’s Daughter, 1998; The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark, 1999). --Shelley Mosley