Eliza and her child are two minor characters in Jane Austen’s "Sense and Sensibility", and Aiken has with cunning and superb craft given them a convincing Austen-ish life of their own. Skilled and wise… this tale of a young love-child tossed by the tides of fate from a poor village to a Bath seminary to London decadence to war-torn Portugal. Prolific, innovative storyteller Aiken again pays tribute to Jane Austen. An engaging, calamity-filled romance rich with Aiken’s shrewd reading of Austen’s people and an appreciative sense of fun.

          A young woman longing for adventure and an artistic life… Because she’s an illegitimate child, Eliza is raised in the rural backwater with very little supervision. An intelligent, creative, and free-spirited heroine, unfettered by the strictures of her time, she makes friends with poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, finds her way to London, and eventually travels the world, all the while seeking to solve the mystery of her parentage. With fierce determination and irrepressible spirits, Eliza carves out a life full of adventure and artistic endeavor.