THE TEA ROSE, by Jennifer Donnelly, is set in London in 1888; the heroine is an Irish girl from the slums, but her whole family is close-knit and very hard working. Jack the Ripper figures prominently in this story. Fiona, the Irish heroine, tragically loses her family and everything they possess because of a brute of a rich man who owns the tea factory in which both she and her da work. She has to take her only remaining family member, a very young brother, and flee London for New York to escape the brutish tea company owner. She's only seventeen and had never before been out of her own neighborhood. But she's gritty and determined. It's a wonderful story; almost an epic - about 758 pages. It grabs your attention from the first page and holds it. I loved this story and the wonderful, fully-fleshed characters who seem so real. I look forward to reading the sequel, THE WINTER ROSE.
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