about the book
If Margaret is to believe her sullen mistress, Minka, she’s a pitiful cripple who should be thankful her mistress took her in out of the goodness of her heart. Well, bugger her! Bugger the village-folk who treat her like an outcast. Bugger especially, the worst tormentor of them all—the miller’s son, Thomas who makes a sport out of making fun of her lame leg and the crutch she must rely on to get around.
Now, Minka has really done it! She’s betrothed Margaret to the local hunchback, who has a droopy eye and slaps women on their bottoms. Minka says it’s for her own good. No, she won’t have that. So, she’s leaving Minka and the only home she’s ever known. Well, at least it’s the only home she remembers.
Margaret doesn’t remember the time before three years old when she was dropped off in a pretty velvet dress at the local church. Before the local priest sent her to live with Minka.
Margaret will find out about those days, though. She is sure she saw her father in the magic mirror that the kind peddler gave her. The mirror is said to reveal the heart’s desire, so she knows the man she saw—the one with the wild hair and green eyes—is her father. And she is going to find him and discover why he didn’t come back for her.
Margaret doesn’t expect to encounter a ragtag band of fellows along the way—a lonely princess, a boy with bagpipes, a monk, among others—who will help her discover her identity, her family, and her heart’s true desire.
about the author
Susan Hill Long was born in the 1960s when it was OK to wear a long dress to school for class pictures. The youngest of four children, Susan grew up in Maine on a farm with a barn where she kept sheep. She named her favorite lamb, Kip. He was the runt of the litter and became exceptionally tame. Kip followed her around wherever she went, a lot like Mary Had a Little Lamb.
A few years later, she tried to become more disciplined, rating her days by color and number with a beloved collection of colored pencils she kept in a brown box. “…the score (both color and number) determined by the meeting of several requirements: I had to do my homework, eat well, exercise, practice my flute, and do something nice for someone else,” Susan says. In this way, she says she tried to bring some color and order to her continually changing world.
Susan held many jobs before she became a full-time writer, including filing slides at a library, and working at a needlework shop. Susan lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two daughters. She also writes under the names Susan Hill and Frances Ann Ladd.
Source:
Author website
Author biography: Goodreads
Author biography: Celebridots
Author interview: Corsets and Cutlasses
Author book introduction: YouTube
Also by Susan Hill Long:
Whistle in the Dark. Holiday House. 2013.
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