Why a Booktrail?
1854, 1874: Two girls separated by fate but joined by friendship find they have a bond that binds them together in unexpected ways.
The Lady’s Maid
What you need to know before your trail
In the quiet of a warm summer’s evening, two young mothers are forced to give up their babies. Whilst Kate grows up knowing only poverty and servitude, Josie’s world is one of privilege and luxury.
Despite the differences in their circumstances, Kate and Josie have been friends since childhood. But their past binds them together in ways they must never know.
Until a chance meeting forces Kate and Josie to confront the truth of that night nearly twenty years before – a truth that turns both worlds upside down and threatens to destroy their friendship forever..
Locations
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Dorset
Maiden Castle
The story couldn’t start in a nicer place with more history. Much of the novel takes place in and around Dorset even if the grander locations of Dalammer house and the Coppestone castle are fictional. There are plenty places which sound like them and which are roughly in the area as those in the novel so on the map they go. Of course,much of Dorset is indeed farmland, so the farm where they all play as children is common to the area – especially back then.
The villages of Puddlecombe where they stay at the rectory for a while is fictional but Puddletown sounds very similar and well worth a visit to see the landscape the rectory would have stood in.
London
The setting for the London season where the fateful dinner party takes place at a grand house at Tavistock Square. This is the city, the capital city where girls like Josephine must go in order to get a husband and become rich. Evenings are filled with balls and dinner parties, daytimes are spent visiting important people. London is only a city to desire when you are rich like Josephine and her family for over in the East End, the dwellings are less salubrious.
Kate works as a maid in the house in Bedford Square”
“Kate was even more conscious of the squalor in which the coachmen, grooms and their families were forced to live, tucked away out of sight of the Georgian terraces in the elegant residential squares”
This is a novel of class, women in a man’s world, society expectations and two sides of the coin. Money and poverty living side by side, and the real limitations on changing one’s place in society
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Lady’s Maid
Destination: Dorset, London, Guernsey Author/Guide: Dilly Court Departure Time: 1854 – 1875 onwards
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