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Authors: Val Wood

Homecoming Girls

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Homecoming Girls
Val Wood
Random House (2010)

Synopsis

Hull, 1874. The beautiful, mysterious Jewel Newmarch, adopted as a baby, turns heads wherever she goes - her exotic looks point to her origins far away from the streets of Hull. Even at her cousin Elizabeth's wedding, she is the belle of the ball. But as she looks on at the happy, newly-married couple she feels a restlessness and intense longing to know her own roots. And so she decides to return to her birthplace in America, taking the bride's twin sister Clara as her companion. In discovering the mysteries of Jewel's past the girls realise that this is a life-changing voyage of discovery for both of them, as they learn important lessons about family, friendship, love and home. But most importantly, love...

 

Val Wood

 

Contents
 

Cover

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Also by Val Wood

Sources

Map

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

About the Author

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781409010661

www.randomhouse.co.uk

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.rbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright © Valerie Wood 2010

Valerie Wood has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9780593066997

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk
The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

For my family with love, and for Peter

 

Also by Val Wood

 

THE HUNGRY TIDE

ANNIE

CHILDREN OF THE TIDE

THE ROMANY GIRL

EMILY

GOING HOME

ROSA’S ISLAND

THE DOORSTEP GIRLS

FAR FROM HOME

THE KITCHEN MAID

THE SONGBIRD

NOBODY’S CHILD

FALLEN ANGELS

THE LONG WALK HOME

RICH GIRL, POOR GIRL

For more information on Val Wood and her books, see her website at
www.valeriewood.co.uk

A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.

Chinese proverb

 
SOURCES
 

Books and information for general research:

 

Hawgood, John A.,
The American West: The Revolution in Western Transportation
, Frontier Library, Eyre & Spottiswood, London, 1967.

Sheehan, James Joseph,
History of the Town and Port of Hull
, John Green, Beverley, 1866.

And the free dictionaries by Farlex and Wikipedia for general information on Han Chinese and Old St Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco.

 
PROLOGUE
 

In the mid-nineteenth century there had been great poverty and distress in the port town of Hull. Cholera, typhus and malnutrition killed off many inhabitants, opium addiction was rife and there were mutterings from the abandoned poor who considered that they suffered much injustice at the hands of the rich and more fortunate. Those amongst them who concluded that they needed to eat and work in order to stay alive and keep a roof over their heads eventually gave up complaining when hunger and apathy sapped their energy.

In those days, two young women on the brink of starvation in a final desperate act took control of their own lives. One, normally quiet and reserved but with a yet undiscovered inner core of steel, became a beacon of hope as she railed against oppression and inequality and spoke up for the rights of herself and others like her; whilst the other, hungry and deprived, succumbed to the lure of a life of comparative ease and became the mistress of a rich and married philanderer.

The consequences of these naive young women’s actions were to stretch out for twenty years or more, touching the lives of many and even reaching the shores of America, which for some wasn’t quite the land of opportunity – the Eldorado – it was meant to be.

Into this New World a child of mixed parentage was born; of her Chinese mother nothing was known except that she too had escaped from oppression, and about her father there
were many questions but few answers. It was to the old town of Hull that the child was returned.

There were many who were curious about her, and wondered about her ancestry. Residents in the port town were used to foreign sailors, brown and weathered, speaking languages that they couldn’t understand, whose only English words were
girls
or
room
. Seamen might occasionally come across a Chinese cook, but rarely did people of that nationality arrive in this eastern harbour. Sometimes women were smuggled off the ships, young pretty women, their faces pale with fear, who, speaking with Germanic or Scandinavian accents, begged to be taken back home.

But never young women like her. Rich, beautiful, and with a cool enigmatic glance which defied interrogation.
Oriental
, the gentry whispered as they speculated. They knew her father, of course, or once did, for he was long dead. The Newmarch family was well known in the town, not only for their wealth, but for their industry and charity, and she was part of it. Her family and close friends knew what little there was to be known, but for the rest she was shrouded in a cloak of mystery and intrigue and many stories were told about her. Over the years the tales faded into obscurity as she was accepted as part of the community, until strangers arrived and asked about her, and then they began again, increasing in exaggeration and veiled insinuation.

CHAPTER ONE
 

March 1874

 

Jewel watched her cousins from across the floor of the state ballroom in the Royal Station Hotel: Elizabeth, married for only an hour, golden-haired, elated and vivacious beside her new husband; on her other side, her twin, Clara, almost but not quite her double, palely serene, but, as Jewel knew well, anxious and fearful at the thought of having lost the sister who for twenty years had been an inseparable part of her life.

BOOK: Homecoming Girls
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