Where the Heart Should Be

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