PEPPERED MOTH

One hot summer afternoon in South Yorkshire, Faro is at a lecture on genetic inheritance. She has travelled from London to the northern mining town where generations of her family have lived and worked to explore her own past. Decades earlier in the early 20th century Bessie Bawtry also ponders her place in the world. A child of unusual determination and precocious intelligence, she longs for the day she will eventually escape. The year is 1905. Bessie sits quietly and studies hard, waiting for the day when she can sit the Cambridge entrance exam. At the other end of the century, her granddaughter Faro Gaulden returns to the town where her grandmother grew up, but for all her exotic ancestry and glamour, has she really travelled any further than them? 400 page paperback.