Florence Grace

Author/Guide: Tracy Rees

Why a Booktrail?

1800s: From the wild windy moors of Cornwall to the glamour of London, Florrie becomes Florence but the spirt of Cornwall never leaves her

ISBN: 978-1784296179
Genre: Fiction, Historical

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What you need to know before your trail

Florrie Buckley is an orphan, living on wild moors of Cornwall. Life is tough, basic and impossible sometimes. Food is sparse and hunger is rife yet the sense of freedom and love Florrie feels her will follow her through life and never leave her.

But at fifteen, she discover something about her family which would change everything. Thrust into a new life in London, she pines for the Cornwall she calls home. Here however, she is to live a life in privilege. But she must learn the new ways, and also be aware of the whole new set of dangers just lurking to trip her up.

One name in particular could be her undoing.

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Travel Guide

Cornwall

“The moors were my soul home, the place I could never be lost’.

From the windswept cover to the descriptions of the rather humble home she lives in, if you snapped Florrie in two, she would have Cornwall written right through her likea stick of rock. For Florrie has to be as tough living here with her family and neighbours. Poverty their only neighbour and a strange woman who lives alone on a hill, in a house where Florrie finds refuge of a sort.
‘I had been walking the moors all my life. They had been my refuge through every trial and tragedy’.

This is the Cornwall where she meets her past and is then transported to London into a life of proper society, good manners and all the trappings of wealth. However she looses her one joy in life – a sense of freedom, of running through the fields feeling the grass beneath her toes.

London

London is a whirlwind of parties and gatherings. But Cornwall beckons – the wind brings its memories and the call comes loud and clear. Florrie, now Florence feels trapped. A gilded cage is still a cage. There may be the odd trip to and from Madiera for some, but that brings problems of its own.

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

I love reading Tracy Rees. What a different novel to her first but equally as compelled and with the same charm and wit in her writing. Florrie is very charming and honest – the whole book is in first person so you really get inside her head and live her journey with her. The only way her story could have been told really. She is Cornwall and Cornwall is her and the strength of her will and her perseverance in life is to be admired. She is so in tune with her surroundings that I really felt her pain when she headed to London. Come back to Cornwall I wanted to shout!

There is so much to this novel and it’s a slow but meaty read. Where is Florrie really happy and how does she make sense of the world around her particularly her new world? I did laugh at some of her mistakes in her new role -a bit like when you go to a posh dinner and use the wrong fork but I didn’t laugh at her but with her at the reactions of others and the class lines that existed at the time. Such a disheartening experience it must have been!

Money doesn’t buy true happiness is true in this novel as is another phrase my granny used to say ‘ fur coat and no knickers’. Bit like Old Rilla, who tells it like it is, and Florrie, now florence navigates such pitfalls as only she can.

The trials and tribulations in her life were fascinating toread bout.Those brothers and what Turlington Grace became…well that was the best part of the novel as the ending was nicely unexpected.

I really feel as if I’ve been in a bit of a time travelling journey with Florrie. I really got to know and like her and was really sad to see her go