Where the Heart Should Be

Published
March 2024
Publishers
UK
Bloomsbury
US
HarperCollins
Estonia
Varrak
France
Rageot Editeur
Hungary
General Press
Iran
Houpaa Books
Ireland, 1846
Nell is working as a scullery maid in the kitchen of the Big House. Once she loved school and books and dreaming. But there's not much choice of work when the land grows food that rots in the earth.
Now she is scrubbing, peeling, washing, sweeping for Sir Philip Wicken, the man who owns her home, her family's land, their crops, everything. His dogs are always well fed, even as famine sets in. Upstairs in the Big House, where Nell is forbidden to enter, is Johnny Browning, newly arrived from England: the young nephew who will one day inherit it all.
And as hunger and disease run rampant all around them, a spark of life and hope catches light when Nell and Johnny find each other.
‘Terrific on every level’ – Daily Mail