‘You need discipline,’ she’d explained over my tears, ‘if you wish to become the perfect maid.’” Moth runs away with the assistance of a sympathetic butler and finds herself on the cold, sinister streets of the Bowery, facing starvation and the unwanted attentions of thieves and beggars. Her new employer is an eccentric with peculiar demands whose abuses quickly escalate: “She took to slapping me across the face, turning the large agate ring she often wore to the inside of her hand before letting loose her anger. When 12-year-old Moth is sold into service by her mother, Moth realizes she’s never truly been loved. It’s a place of extreme wealth and utter poverty where beautifully dressed society women and men collide with an underworld of homeless children to whom even a stolen apple can mean the difference between life and death. The hook: An intriguing story of a spirited girl and the female doctor who tries to save her from a “fate worse than death,” which will ruin her reputation in 19th century Manhattan.
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