Emmeline

Before she turned fourteen, Emmeline Mosher left the Maine farm where she was raised and headed for a Massachusetts textile mill, hoping her wages would help keep her family afloat. The setting is 1839, when the young mill towns of New England were growing fast and drawing in rural girls like her.

Judith Rossner, who also wrote Looking for Mr. Goodbar, frames the story as a dark, unsettling account of a desperate girl pulled into the harsh world of an early industrial town and the predatory attentions that come with it.