Book two-hundred-and-three: The Tea Rose

The Tea Rose (2002)
Jennifer Donnelly

Rating: 4.5/5
[Re-reading]

I love this book so much. There is a scene in it that makes me cry every single time I read it.

There are things about this book that are a little unbelievable – mostly the characters involvement in ‘famous’ things – but I still find it really compelling.

There is a sort-of sequel called The Winter Rose which is almost as good.

East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night. Where shining hopes meet the darkest truths.

Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, a bright, defiant young woman dares to dream of a life beyond tumbledown wharves, gaslit alleys, and the grim and crumbling dwellings of the poor.

Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save and sacrifice to achieve their dreams. But Fiona's plans are shattered when the actions of a dark and brutal man force her to flee London for New York.

There, her indomitable spirit – and the ghosts of her past – propel her rise from a modest West Side shop front to the top of Manhattan's tea trade. Fiona's old ghosts do not rest quietly, however, and to silence them, she must venture back to the London of her childhood, where a deadly confrontation with her past becomes the key to her future. The Tea Rose is a towering old-fashioned story, imbued with a modern sensibility, of a family's destruction, of murder and revenge, of love lost and won again, and of one determined woman's quest to survive and triumph.Authentic and moving, The Tea Rose is an unforgettable novel – one certain to take its place beside such enduring epics as A Woman of Substance, The Thornbirds, and The Shell Seekers.

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Finished: Sunday 4/11