Summary

Liverpool, England, in Victorian times was no place to be a poor girl. Linny Gow knows this firsthand. When her mother dies, her father begins prostituting her at the age of 12. Linny manages to leave prostitution, and with the help of a kindly would-be doctor, she begins to pass herself off as a middle-class woman. When Linny gets the opportunity to leave England behind, she sets off for India without looking back. In India she meets the cruel Somers Ingram. Ingram recognizes her from her days in Liverpool and blackmails her into a sexless and violent marriage. Coincidences and luck, both good and bad, abound. Linny's intelligence and pluck may be almost a cliche in historical literature, but the plot moves at a fast enough pace, and the descriptions are so vivid that the book becomes a page-turner