Joseph P Garland – författare

Margaret Treacy, a poor farmgirl in Ireland, comes to New York, hoping to find a position as a maid in a fashionable house. And she does. But it all falls apart when she's dismissed without an explanation and set adrift. A maid for a never-in-fashion new-money family, a factory worker, and a nun. She leaves the order when she learns that her first mistress couldn't bear her presence. Because it prevented her from fulfilling her obligation to "e;love"e; a man and have his children. Margaret and that woman, Elinor, arrange to be together, however platonically, till Elinor's world is shattered when she and her daughter are forcibly taken to London. And it becomes Margaret's obsession to get her back. And to save her.

A careless moment. An overturned candle. An inferno that kills Nora Ferguson's parents and leaves her permanently scarred across her once beautiful face. In Dublin, Ireland. 1880.Fleeing to America and finding work as a governess for a newly-rich family in Gilded Age New York until she is discovered as a writer. She will work as a reporter and then because the author of a novel about the horrendous conditions of the tenements and the suffering of the young prostitutes who can never escape.And from a most unlikely source, a man able to ignore her disfigurement to discover love.

Cassandra Owens is in her late 40s. She works in the marketing department of a publishing house that's in Manhattan's Flatiron District.When her husband Keith cheated a second time, she had no more forgiveness to offer and they divorced. Some time later, and for reasons unknown, he killed himself.Not long after that, Cassie is walking up the path to her affluent suburban home. She is coming from work and sees a ggirl she doesn't recognize rise to meet her. The girl says she is Scarlett Evans. She shows Cassie a letter. She recognizes her late husband's handwriting and is stunned to discover that Scarlett, aged 16, is Keith's daughter.This is the story of how Cassie confronts the reality of her husband's daughter while she navigates her own efforts to find a man, a good man, who deserves her love.This the story of one woman's evolution and the creation of a family she could not have imagined before she walked up her path and discovered Scarlett Evans.