In the House of the Queen's Beasts by Jean Thesman

He claims to be able to talk with birds and ‘Spirit Lights.’ And he is spending too much time with Gull Walk’s teenaged handyman, Jonah.

He doesn’t seem to have a shadow anymore. As they settle in, Charlotte realizes that something about Gull Walk is very disturbing, and it is affecting her adopted younger brother, Will. Its sweeping narrative and its intimate look at the lives of two girls at the beginning of the twentieth century is unforgettable.Ĭharlotte Thacker and her siblings have been sent to stay with family friends, the Warders, at their hotel on the edge of Puget Sound. A Sea So Far is Jean Thesman’s first historical novel since The Tree of Bells. The two make the exhausting journey by train and boat, where they stay with Jolie’s aunt, and thrive in ways Dr. Kate is ecstatic, until he entrusts her with the Logan family secret, one she must keep from Jolie no matter what. They are still getting used to each other when Jolie’s father suddenly decides to send them to Ireland. Their lives collide a year later, when Kate is hired as Jolie’s ‘personal companion’ an odd combination of maid, nurse, and, perhaps, friend. Among the many victims are two teenage girls: orphaned Kate Keely, who has to quit high school to go to work, and Jolie Logan, still recovering from an almost fatal case of scarlet fever and the death of her beautiful mother. San Francisco is shaken and shattered by a nightmare earthquake. And as sheties her wishes on scraps of paper to the family’s’ornament tree,’ Bonnie dares to believe that her newhome and the people in it are the beginning of a new lifewhere her fondest wishes can come true.Īpril 18, 1906. After escaping from the misery of living with herdisagreeable aunt, Bonnie has found a home where sheis happy and where she is valued often for taking chargeof problems that threaten to become disasters. Yet whenhandsome young boarder Carson Young, a blind veteran of theGreat War, jokingly warns Bonnie to run for her life,she knows she isn’t going anywhere. Money is always a problem and the boarders arefrequently at odds with one another and with the household ofwomen, not one of whom knows how to cook. The progressive ladies crusade for causes likewomen’s suffrage, yet they are quite inept at managing thehousehold.

Her charming, haplessrelatives have been forced to take in gentleman boarders tomake ends meet.

Bonnie Shaster, fourteen years old and recently orphaned,has happily come to live with her mother’s family in Seattle,never expecting to find such chaos.

In the House of the Queen's Beasts by Jean Thesman