The Tea Rose: A Novel

About this book

East London 1888-a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves whores and dreamers mingle where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here by the whispering waters of the Thames a bright and defiant young woman dares to dream of a life beyond tumbledown wharves gaslit alleys and the grim and crumbling dwellings of the poor. Fiona Finnegan a worker in a tea factory hopes to own a shop one day together with her lifelong love Joe Bristow a costermongers son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on Fiona and Joe struggle save and sacrifice to achieve their dreams. But Fionas dreams are shattered when the actions of a dark and brutal man take from her nearly everything-and everyone-she holds dear. Fearing her own death at the dark mans hands she is forced to flee London for New York. There her indomitable spirit-and the ghosts of her past-propel her rise from a modest west side shopfront to the top of Manhattans tea trade. Fionas old ghosts do not rest quietly however and to silence them she must venture back to the London of her childhood where a deadly confrontation with her past becomes the key to her future. The Tea Rose is a towering old-fashioned story imbued with a modern sensibility of a familys destruction of murder and revenge of love lost and won again and of one determined womans quest to survive and triumph. Authentic and moving The Tea Rose is an unforgettable novel-one certain to take its place beside such enduring epics as A Woman of Substance The Thornbirds and The Shell Seekers.