Central Kansas Library System

Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself, one in which, she hopes, as a hired girl working for six dollars a week can become what a Pennsylvania farm girl could only dream of, a woman with a future.

When her father is injured, fourteen-year-old Nazia is pulled away from school, her friends, and her preparations for an arranged marriage, to help her mother clean houses in a wealthy part of Karachi, Pakistan, where she finally rebels against the destiny that is planned for her.

As the widowed master of an elegant house in Victorian-era London slips slowly into madness and his tyrannical housekeeper takes on more power, a ghostly presence distracts a teenaged maidservant with clues to a deadly secret.