Five-year-old Joy Briggs is as valuable a commodity as a silver salver in the child-brothels of Victorian London, and to Jack Riddles, the terrifying burglar who one winter's night breaks into her parents' opulent home, she is a haul well worth having. But in the hue and cry following the robbery Riddles abandons the young girl - deaf and so deemed stupid - in a canal tunnel. To her distress, for the child's silent knowingness has touched him, she is gone on his return. Though haunted by the girl, Riddles believes she must have drowned, and the grim-faced Scotland Yard men who attempt to placate her outraged parents are sure she is lost to the city's vice-infested underworld. But they are wrong. For Joy has been found by a family of canal folk who bring her up as their own, giving her the kind of open-hearted love she could never have received from her own parents. But as Joy reaches womanhood it becomes clear that her past cannot let her live in peace and that events she witnessed as a child on that bitter Deecember night mean there are those who want her dead... Teeming with the atmosphere of Victorian London, THE FOUNDLING is a moving and suspenseful saga of loss and redemption from the highly talented author of CITY and the Ben London trilogy. Previous owner's name inscribed on top right hnd corner of opening page.

Saga Fiction Victorian