“I am just going to write because I cannot help it.”

                                                                     Charlotte Brontë

Haworth 1847. When Mother and her beloved twin brothers are taken by the Haworth ‘miasma’, to keep her family from the workhouse, 15-year-old Kate takes a cleaning job at The Parsonage, home to the Brontë family. Kate dreams of being a writer. Poverty and gender stand in her way and Luke Feather who wants to marry her, believes writing stories is a waste of time.

When Charlotte Brontë discovers Kate’s passion for books and writing, an important friendship develops. Kate begins to embrace Charlotte’s radical ideas of equality and is thrilled when she spots clues that the Brontë sisters are writing stories. But how can Kate achieve her ambitions to write, while locked in the daily struggle to survive in Haworth? 

Miriam Halahmy has written a novel which brings the Brontës alive for a new generation of readers. Themes of women’s rights, inequality and poverty are illuminated in beautiful character-driven storytelling. In a world of increasing inequality and global attacks on women’s rights, this is a novel for our time.