Book description
While researching her ancestry on the Internet one gloomy evening,
Penny is astonished by what she finds. Urgently, she instructs her
sister Sheelagh, "Search 'Slaidburn Suspected Child Murder!'
Now!" So begins a remarkable story within a story spanning more
than a century.
In 1885 Yorkshire, sisters Grace and Isabella, accused of murdering
Grace's secret illegitimate toddler, were on trial for their lives. A
sadly neglected two-year-old boy was dead following a failed attempt
to lodge him at a workhouse. A tense and sensational trial followed in
Victorian-era Leeds.
Sheelagh and Penny began keenly re-investigating these events. They
feel personally involved because a prosecution witness at the murder
trial, nine-year-old Margaret Isherwood, would later become their
grandmother. The book grips us with dramatic events, but also touches
us with the abiding loyalty of sisterhood, the desperate power of our
need for love, and the crazy things that it can make us do.
M. Sheelagh Whittaker has been featured in the prestigious Women
of Influence lecture series and is a member of Maclean's Honour Roll.
She was named “The Pioneer” in the Globe and Mail's Women in
Power series. A quintessential Canadian who was born in Ottawa, she
was raised on the Prairies and has worked in most parts of the country.
