Curiosities : a novel

Summary: "A thrilling literary-historical novel with a modern twist, in the vein of Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald. Curiosity begins when a present-day historian discovers a cache of five seventeenth-century manuscripts that each, astonishingly, tells the same strange story from vastly different points of view. The five manuscripts (which become the five parts of the novel) spin this tale: after the plague descends upon a village in England, two children, Joan and Thomasina, are the only survivors. They bond tightly with each other and with a mute woman living in a field nearby, who discovers and cares for them. When people return, the woman, as the lone adult alive, is accused of witchcraft, and the children are separated. Joan becomes a maid in the local manor house, and eventually, through her intelligence and skill, companion to the fascinating Lady Margaret Long. Thomasina, taken on a voyage to Virginia, decides to adopt boy's clothing and navigate life as a man named Tom. Tom and Joan find each other again as adults and fall in love, but are discovered together, naked, by young clergyman John Heard. Shocked and horrified, he believes in only one explanation for Tom's state: Joan must be a witch. Tom, trying to save both himself and Joan, runs as far away as he can, taking a position aboard an expedition through the Northwest Passage. The modern historian pieces together the interlocking stories of all five manuscripts and adds her own layer of "truth" to a history and time period where labels for who Tom and Joan might truly be, didn't yet exist. Curiosity is a compulsively readable novel, at the heart of which are characters who are utterly charming and whose journeys you'll feel deeply connected to."--