The Forgotten Seamstress - Liz Trenow

It is 1910 and Maria, a talented young girl from the East end of London, is employed to work as a seamstress for the royal family. As an attractive girl, she soon catches the eye of the Prince of Wales and she in turn is captivated by his glamour and intensity.

But careless talk causes trouble and soon Maria’s life takes a far darker turn. Disbelieved and dismissed she is thrown into a mental asylum, shut away from the real world with only her needlework for company.

Can a beautiful quilt, discovered many years later, reveal the truth behind what happened to Maria?

My thoughts:

This book was really sad at times, not the oh no that person died sad, but heartbreaking sad of how Maria was treated. The cruelty of the world made me so angry.

Maria was young, happy, and fell in love with a prince. You know that that will not end well and it does not. The book is told through Maria when she becomes a seamstress, Maria when she is interviewed in the 70s and is believed to be crazy and through Caroline in our time, she finds a quilt and wants to know who made it.

The first story leads Maria to her doom. In the 70s flashbacks we see that she was in a mental asylum, but why? And that was the heartbreaking part. I got so angry there that I stopped for a moment. And the thing is, that I did not know if anything Maria said was true either. That was the intriguing part too, did she tell the truth or was she insane?

Conclusion:

So it was a mystery to be solved and the ending was a good one. I enjoyed the book.

cover

nice

Paperback, 336 pages
Published May 6th 2014 by Sourcebooks Landmark (first published December 5th 2013)
Historical fiction / fiction
for review