Tea Rose

East London, 1888, is a city of contrasts, where thieves, prostitutes and dreamers share the streets. Children play on the cobbles by day, a killer stalks them at night, and hope runs up against hard truths. Beside the Thames, Fiona Finnegan works in a tea factory and dreams of owning a shop of her own. She plans to do it with Joe Bristow, her lifelong love and a costermonger's son. With little but their trust in each other, the two struggle, save and sacrifice toward that goal. Then the actions of a brutal man take almost everything and everyone Fiona cares about. Afraid for her own life, she escapes London for New York. There her determination carries her from a modest shopfront on the West Side to the top of Manhattan's tea trade. But the ghosts of her past will not stay quiet. To silence them, Fiona must go back to the London of her childhood, where a deadly confrontation with what happened to her may decide her future. The Tea Rose is Jennifer Donnelly's novel and the first book in a trilogy that continues with The Winter Rose and The Wild Rose.