The Tailor's Daughter

Set in 1860's Victorian England, Janice Graham's suspenseful new novel tells the story of Veda Grenfell, a passionate young woman with an indomitable spirit. Raised on Savile Row, the enclave of fashionable London tailors, Veda is every inch her father's daughter. She has inherited his talent, his sense of style, and his love of tailoring. When a fever leaves her deaf at the age of sixteen, shattering her hopes of marriage, only Grenfell's familiar workshop offers any promise of an active life. Determined to prove her worth in a world off-limits to respectable women, Veda eventually persuades her father to promote her to the front of the shop where she . She makes a name for herself as tailor to London's smart young sporting set. Veda matures into a woman of eye-catching beauty, inspiring the devotion of her dear and faithful tutor, Mr. Nicholls, as well as an ambitious Italian whose marriage proposal she rejects, with disastrous consequences for her father's firm. For years, Veda has been increasingly drawn to Harry Breadalbane, a young viscount with humane ambitions frustrated by the expectations of his class. Heedless of the unsettling rumors about Harry's family and his brutally powerful father, Veda has absolute faith in Harry's goodness. When passion turns to betrayal, she abandons her beloved Savile Row and sets off on a treacherous journey that will lead her into a world of deception, murder, and madness. In the classic tradition of richly detailed historical fiction, Graham's elegant prose paints a deeply human portrait of a girl both willful and confused, vulnerable and yet fiercely courageous. Veda's chronicle of her struggle to sustain ties with the hearing world, and her determination to seize for herself those dreams others try to deny her, render her character unforgettable and illuminate a world rarely imagined in literature.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Romance, Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.