The Tailor’s Girl by Fiona McIntosh is a historical fiction novel but also a romance.
I have read Fiona McIntosh previously, The French Promise and The Lavender Keeper.
The Tailor’s Girl is another book for my Historical Fiction Reading Challenge as the story is set in the few years following World War I.
From the cover:
When a humble soldier, known only as Jones, wakes in a military hospital he has no recollection of his past. Jones’s few fleeting memories are horrifying moments from the battlefield at Ypres. His identity becomes a puzzle he must solve.
Then Eden Valentine arrives in his world, a stunning seamstress who dreams of her own high-fashion salon in London. Mourning the loss of her brother in the war, Eden cannot turn away the soldier in desperate need of her help.
The key to Jones’s past – and Eden’s future – may lie with the mysterious Alex Wynter, aristocratic heir to the country manor Larksfell Hall. But the news that Alex bears will bring shattering consequences that threaten to tear their lives apart.
This novel is set in London in the 1920’s but there are also glimpses of the English countryside and aristocratic living. Eden is the daughter of a Jewish tailor who had aspirations to work in Savile Row but now does piece work for the Savile Row tailors. Eden is a talented seamstress and the novel highlights the difficulties for working women when the war ended and the difficulties soldiers suffered when they returned from the war. Eden and Jones are both strong and determined characters and the interplay of their stories is beautifully done.
The reader lives in hope throughout the novel and it is not until the last few pages that you find out whether your hope has been in vain.
A terrific novel. Highly recommended. Another Australian author.
Gippsland Granny 